50 Pianos- 11.000 Strings and an Act of Rebellion

11.000 Saiten by Georg Friedrich Haas premiers in Bolzano

Ferrucio Busoni dreamed of the "dematerialization" of the piano - composer Georg Friedrich Haas considers it an "act of rebellion" to write music that can only be experienced in the immediate moment, i.e. in concert, and is almost impossible to record.

Dream and rebellion were redeemed in the most wonderful way with the world premiere of Georg Friedrich Haas' 11,000 strings - the composer did not have a single well-sounding single piano in mind, but thinks of all 50 instruments as one.
The idea for 11,000 Saiten for 50 microtonally tuned pianos and chamber orchestras was born in the recording room of the Hailun piano factory in Ningbo, China, where Busoni-Mahler director Peter Paul Kainrath heard hundreds of mechanically and simultaneously played pianos. A microtonal thunderstorm that seemed beyond imagination. The call to the composer was made on site and the plan was made. Five years later, on August 1 2023, the composition, commissioned by the Busoni Mahler Foundation and supported by the Ernst von Siemens Foundation, was premiered in Bozen with musicians from various conservatories at home and abroad and students from the Gustav Mahler Academy.