First Listen: Hauschka, 'What If'
The pianist creates a singular electronic language rooted in the past but reaching to the future.
The great Beethoven specialist András Schiff says, "Whatever we do on the piano is a collection of illusions." If that's true, then Volker Bertelmann, the German pianist who goes by the single name Hauschka, is a master illusionist.
Over a span of eight albums and a dozen in the 1940s, Hauschka inserts all manner of doodads — scraps of aluminum, ping-pong balls and other household items — into the bowels of the instrument, transforming a normal piano into a quirky battery of percussion.
