Piano Extra II - Journey to Softness

In the organizer's words:

journey to softness

Kunal Lahiry piano

Works by Scriabin | Ligeti | Crumb | Glass | Berio | Ravel | Lachenmann | Beethoven and Radiohead

The Indian-American pianist Kunal Lahiry is known for his special concert concepts. Under the title "trans*Winterreise", he has reinterpreted Schubert's song cycle from the perspective of a queer identity. And the program he has put together for his debut in Duisburg also follows a dramaturgical idea. According to the artist, "journey to softness" takes "Ligeti's 'L'escalier du diable' and Beethoven's late Piano Sonata op. 110 as musical pillars to simulate the paradigm shift between the patriarchal 'staircase' - its relentless order - and the fugue as a symbol of queer liberation". Lahiry begins his concert with a movement from Alexander Scriabin's 4th Piano Sonata, music full of "purity, bliss and unadulterated, cosmic beauty". But Ligeti interrupts "what should be an ecstatic conclusion to the sonata". What follows is an attempt to unlearn the conditioned movements that this "staircase" demands. Afterwards, "Crumb, Glass and Berio suggest hesitation and moments of fragility". Ravel's "Une barque sur l'océan" and Lachenmann's "Guero" introduce "water and sounds as interruptions and counter the rigid mechanics of the staircase with fluidity and rupture. By using water as a transformative element, one finally reaches the state of fugue" - in the 3rd movement of Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 31. "Karma Police" by the British rock band Radiohead "functions as the final folding of the abstract into the personal, where irony and protest meet".