Six Pianos

After sold-out concerts at the Kölner Philharmonie, the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn, the Großer Sendesaal of rbb and the Großer Saal of the Elbphilharmonie, the Six Pianos project founded by Gregor Schwellenbach is now coming together for a concert in Berlin: On March 18, 2024, the pianists will sit down to Steve Reich's masterful composition for six concert grand pianos, as well as the great classic of minimal music - Terry Riley's Keyboard Study #2. In addition, they will also play their own works.
Six Pianos, composed by Steve Reich in March 1973, was originally conceived for all the pianos available in a New York piano store, but Reich found the resulting sound too dense. So he limited himself to six pianos, which, when placed in a confined space, allow for very precise timing.
Although somewhat less well-known to today's audiences than Steve Reich or Philip Glass, Terry Riley is undoubtedly also one of the great pioneers of musical minimalism. With In C and Keyboard Studies, he composed the original sonatas of this musical genre in 1964 and 1965.
Both compositions follow the typical structures of minimal music with a short, rhythmic-melodic figure: a series of repetitions and variations, which the musicians play partly synchronously, partly offset by a few bars, result in so-called phasing, in which musical patterns are layered on top of each other. The individual playing merges into a kind of musical trance that gradually charges the listener with an almost meditative tension. In contrast to the piece Six Pianos, in which every note is through-composed, the musicians play and vary the patterns in Riley's Keyboard Study #2 at will.
Gregor Schwellenbach, John Kameel Farah, Erol Sarp, Daniel Brandt, Paul Frick and Kai Schumacher belong to a new generation of classically trained pianists who take a natural approach to modern pop and club music. What they all have in common is a strong connection to the works of the pioneers of minimal music: despite different approaches, the sound researches form a starting point for their own work, in which they repeatedly produce innovative music between electronics, jazz and contemporary music.
After the great success of 2022 in the sold-out Great Hall of the Elbphilharmonie, we are delighted to present Six Pianos at the Philharmonie Berlin on March 18, 2024.