GrauSchumacher Piano Duo
Mantra
*2022 stock* 'Composed in 1970, Mantra, for two pianos and ring modulation, was one of the decisive turning points in Karlheinz Stockhausen’s career. The 70-minute piece not only signalled a break with the text-based intuitive works, relying heavily on improvisation, that had come to dominate his output towards the end of the previous decade and a return to fully notated scores, but also introduced the idea of melodic formulae, the “mantra” of the title, which Stockhausen would eventually develo…
Piano Duet
Before the epigones take over the stage we are given a chance to hear out Bach himself: the unfinished four-voice Contrapunctus XIV from the Art of the Fugue marks the starting point of Andreas Grau's and Götz Schumacher's remarkable exploration of the Bach cosmos. In the Berlin autograph of the Contrapunctus XIV the place where the score breaks off is marked by an inscription: "At the point where the name BACH is introduced in the countersubject to this fugue, the composer died." Even though fr…