Erinnerungsspuren (memory traces) is a six-part homage to the piano by the Spanish composer Alberto Posadas, written between 2014 and 2018 and recorded complete for the first time by Florian Hoelscher. Each part takes a predecessor as its starting point: François Couperin, Claude Debussy, Robert Schumann, Giacinto Scelsi, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Bernd Alois Zimmermann. The result is close to eighty minutes of new piano writing in dialogue with the history of the instrument.

Posadas was born in Valladolid in 1967 and studied there and in Madrid. From 1988 he worked with Francisco Guerrero, whom he considers his mentor, exploring forms based on combinatorics and fractal theory. He later turned to other models: architectural designs transposed into music, techniques of perspective from painting, topography, and a close study of the acoustics of particular instruments. He received Spain's Premio Nacional de Música in 2011 and in 1991 became professor of analysis, theory and composition at the Majadahonda Conservatory in Madrid. Hoelscher plays the whole cycle alone.

The six pieces are called Anklänge, echoes. Anklänge an François Couperin (2014) opens the cycle, followed by Anklänge an "La cathédrale engloutie" (2015), after Debussy's prelude, and Anklänge an Robert Schumann (2015). Anklänge an "Aitsi" (2017) refers to Scelsi's piece for amplified piano of 1974 and is one of the two longest parts. Anklänge an Stockhausen (2017) is the shortest, and Anklänge an B. A. Zimmermann (2018) closes the cycle at almost nineteen minutes. Special techniques with the pedals, with preparations and inside the instrument let single sounds and micro-intervals change while they are still resonating.

Posadas does not draw explicit links to the past. He extracts concepts from the historical repertoire, the memory traces of the title, and turns them into pianistic experiments in what Schott calls a trans-historical sound space. The cycle raises more questions than it answers. How can new and old material throw a different light on each other, perhaps even redefine each other? And what can quotation mean when it comes to building bridges between the known and the unknown?

CD, Wergo WER 7377 2, released in 2018, first recordings.