The experimental pianist and composer Volker Bertelmann, alias Hauschka, calls himself a "sound searcher". He puts table-tennis balls in his piano's sound box, between the strings he clamps rubber erasers, drawing pins and much more. The sounds Hauschka coaxes out of his prepared piano in this way remind one of an exotic drum or an electronic effects device. But in his newest works, the grandmaster of the pianistic mood landscape is now opening up some quite different worlds of sound; Hauschka has discovered the big symphony orchestra. In the 2014/15 season, he is composer in residence with the MDR Symphony Orchestra in Leipzig. The orchestra and its leader, Kristjan Järvi, commissioned Hauschka to arrange a number of his pieces for symphony orchestra. In addition, he created Cascades - a large, three-part composition for orchestra and choir. With these orchestral pieces Hauschka has given his music a new dimension: the monumental. The big symphonic sound is the sound searcher's newest find. Every faithful Hauschka fan will nonetheless always recognise the essential features of his music, because even when writing for an orchestra, the four cornerstones of Hauschka's musical world are the same: "beauty, ephemerality, melancholy and absurdity".
