While touching on the work of musical innovators, such as Erik Satie and John Cage, Hauschka reimagines the potential of the prepared piano for the 21st century – a technique that involves inserting objects between the instrument’s strings or onto its hammers to expand its sonic and operative possibilities.
His forthcoming album, Philanthropy, will be released on October 20th on City Slang.
Bertelmann — whose extraordinary score for All Quiet On The Western Front won an Oscar in 2023 — uses his work not only to move people, whether emotionally or physically but also to provoke. No one sounds like the Düsseldorf-based Hauschka, which he quite reasonably celebrates on Philanthropy by revisiting past habits. “I really loved how I worked in the beginning,” he smiles. “I wanted to connect with the time I first started.” Most of the record was recorded alone on his piano in his studio, beginning in the summer of 2022, though Bertelmann never restricts his use of his instrument to its keys. Throughout the album, he employs a Turkish davul drum and, more prominently than ever, synthesizers, not least a bass synth. There are also contributions from cellist Laura Wiek, violinist Karina Buschinger, and Múm’s drummer Samuli Kosminen.
In the four years between 2019’s A Different Forest and the forthcoming Philanthropy, Bertelmann’s score for All Quiet On The Western Front was part of a major rush of productivity precipitated by the success of 2016’s Oscar-nominated collaboration with Dustin O’Halloran on the score to Garth Davis’ Lion. He and O’Halloran have since worked on several projects, most recently the Kate Winslet-starring Ammonite. Bertelmann’s catalog now includes almost 50 film and TV scores, with 2018’s Patrick Melrose, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, again nominated for a BAFTA, which in turn led him to work again with its director, Edward Berger, on All Quiet On The Western Front.
An occasion for celebration and reflection, Philanthropy is a carefully considered but jubilantly improvised response to recent years, with its philosophically inclined but approachable and compassionate creator at the peak of his compositional powers.