Track Listing

1. Blue Bicycle
2. Morgenrot
3. Rode Null
4. Freibad
5. Barfuss Durch Gras
6. Heimat
7. Nadelwald
8. Schones Madchen
9. Eltern
10. Alma
11. Neuschnee
12. Weeks Of Rain

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #54909 in Music
• Released on: 2008-09-22
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .20 pounds

CD Description
Hauschka is the persona of German pianist/composer Volker Bertelmann, and, on FERNDOFF, he has created an accessibly avant-garde work of great beauty. At times, tracks like "Schoenes Maedchen" sound like creaky minimalist discoveries from silent-film soundtracks. Simultaneously, however, lush orchestration will then find its way in like light leaking through porous cracks. The combination of prepared piano pieces and contemporary pop-classical aesthetics is a striking one, likening Hauschka all at once to Gottfried Huppertz, John Cage, and overseas kindred spirit Jenny Scheinman.

Customer Reviews

Elegant compelling chamber music
Anyone who has heard and enjoyed the work of Harold Budd, Steve Reich, Michael Nyman or John Cage should find Ferndorf a fascinating listen . Cage is probably the most apt comparison as Dusseldorf-based pianist and composer Volker Bertelmann, who records as Hauschka has a similar avant garde approach to playing the piano as Cage , or rather did- He often modifies the piano in the middle of live concerts in order to provoke different sounds and textures from it and his last album utilised this "prepared piano" technique .
However for Fendorf ( named after a German village) he has gone back to piano basics but expanded the instrumentation with violin (by Sabine Baron), cello (by Insa Schirmer and Donja Djember), and trombone (by Bernhard Voelz). Elegant deceptively simple but pleasingly melodic piano themes are augmented by counterpoint strings which sometime drift into an extension of an existing melody or arrangement.
This is lovely elegant melodically compelling chamber music that over 12 tracks very rarely palls and in one or two instances is genuinely sonically compelling. "Rode Null" (named after a mountain near his parents home) is centred around a thrumming bass while perky strings pirouette over the top. Trumpet percolates through "Freibad" while "Barfuss Durch Gras" trickles electronic tics trills and plinks over a gradual emersion of sombre piano notes .Its as fascinating a piece of music as I have heard in a long time. "Eltern" incorporates phased electronics while "Heimat " has an instrument- woozily recorded- so it fades in and out of the mix that sounds slightly eastern but for which I have no real clue what it is. The sleeve notes don't help either.....anyway it's slightly bizarre( the track not the sleeve notes ) but massively engaging .
More of this and less of the simple piano/string combinations might have made Ferndorf into a truly extraordinary album . Mostly though Bertlemann goes for melodic simplicity-Schones Madchen" and the stately "Alma" are especially fine- but it's when the album is ingrained with textural depth that it really mesmerizes.