LEILA FADEL, BYLINE: Pianist and composer Volker Bertelmann, better known as Hauschka, likes to fill his piano with all kinds of found objects to create new sounds - Ping-Pong balls, paperclips, bottle caps - anything goes, and his technique, known as prepared piano, can create some surprising results.
(SOUNDBITE OF HAUSCHKA'S "DIVERSITY")
FADEL: Bertelsmann score for "All Quiet On The Western Front" won an Oscar this year, and today he has a new album out called "Philanthropy." I caught up with him ahead of his release. He's here with me now. Good morning.
HAUSCHKA: Good morning.
FADEL: All the types of sounds that you've made come from the piano, I find it just so fascinating. Could you share a bit of that process? I mean, this is really your signature.
HAUSCHKA: I'm trying to find material that is changing, in a way, the strings. I definitely used a lot with gaffer tape. So I tape the strings. It depends where you put the tape on, so when you put it a little bit upwards, it's getting much more damped. And then I'm starting, slowly, to pick things out of my basket of trash.
FADEL: Basket of trash?
HAUSCHKA: Yeah. Yeah. It's actually things that I put in there, like, materials that when you look at it, you're like, oh, can you throw that away and clean the room a little bit? But there's maybe a piece of plastic or Ping-Pong ball or, like, some papers that I found somewhere.
(SOUNDBITE OF HAUSCHKA'S "DETACHED")
HAUSCHKA: Sometimes I go in shops that are very special. Like, for example, that have little iron balls or things where you can buy them in different sizes. I'm using, like, a small children drum that I found in a Turkish market in Istanbul. I put that on the strings, and I place things inside of the drum. So whenever I hit the string, the things that are inside of the drum, they are jumping.
FADEL: Oh.
HAUSCHKA: And so they jump up. And when they land, they build a kind of weird, random carpet of sounds.
(SOUNDBITE OF HAUSCHKA'S "DIVERSITY")
FADEL: The title of your new album, "Philanthropy," how does that apply to your music? How did you choose that?
HAUSCHKA: Well, after coming out of COVID, there was a lot of stress in my surroundings.
FADEL: Yeah.
HAUSCHKA: You know, a lot of things were quite negative. And I came to the result that the - what is actually left is, in a way, humanity. And no matter where we going, what we have is actually our connections with, you know, with our families, with people that we know, but also, with others that we might not know and come back into the positive news and, you know, strengthen the interaction with each other.
(SOUNDBITE OF HAUSCHKA'S "MAGNANIMITY")
FADEL: Let's talk about your lead single, "Loved Ones." You're accompanied by strings, specifically a cello. What's the story behind this song?
HAUSCHKA: Sometimes in the morning when I'm going in the studio and I switch on all the gear and I'm pretty much by myself because I'm quite an early bird, when I'm then going to the piano, a lot of times, the melodies that come in my mind are very subtle melodic pieces in a way that have maybe a certain melancholy involved, because melancholy is not a negative thing. It's actually involving both, like, sadness and happiness at the same time. I think both...
FADEL: Oh, interesting.
HAUSCHKA: ...Have to coexist next to each other, I think. So this composition was coming very early in the morning, and I was thinking about the people that are around me that hold me in certain places. They are not many, but the ones that you can count on, they should be very strong.
(SOUNDBITE OF HAUSCHKA'S "LOVED ONES")
FADEL: When you think about your loved ones and the few people you've chosen that will carry you, that will hold you and have chosen you, what does that sound like?
HAUSCHKA: Well, it sounds for me, like, warm and strong, in a way. Very clear in terms of do you need help? Yes. OK. I'm coming. Things like that.
FADEL: Yeah.
HAUSCHKA: I think that's, in a way, as well, the musical language that I thought I want to try, which is like a main melody that is very clear. And there is a, in a way, an A part, the melody part, and the B part, and then it's going back to A and then that's it.
(SOUNDBITE OF HAUSCHKA'S "LOVED ONES")
FADEL: How did you start putting things in the piano, on the strings, in between, on top?
HAUSCHKA: Well, I was always a fan of being independent.
FADEL: Yeah.
HAUSCHKA: You know, like, when you think about a beat, oh, I need a drummer. When you want to have a bass line, ah, I need the bass player. So you have always to call them up. But I wanted to find an initial possibility of whenever I have a thought and I stand up in the morning, I'm like, oh, I have this beat in mind. I just wanted to do it by myself and not using a drum computer. Whenever you change the quality of the point where the hammer hits the string, that also influences the sound massively. So I have an endless option.
(SOUNDBITE OF HAUSCHKA'S "LIMITATION OF LIFETIME")
HAUSCHKA: Maybe you can see me, in a way, like, in front of a canvas, and I'm painting, like, let's say 10 colors on the canvas. And then I take, like, some - like, a spoon, and I scratch the color back off the canvas. So in some areas, it's - I reach the very first color and in other areas I have a mixture of all 10. What it does, it actually creates tension and it relaxes you in the same time.
FADEL: Yes. You can feel it when you're listening.
HAUSCHKA: Yes. Yes. Through the decompressing, you feel much more calm. Sometimes people write me and they say, hey, we use your work when we are writing scripts for a film, or I'm using your work when I'm writing a book. So a lot of times, the music is used for - or people are using that while they are creative.
(SOUNDBITE OF HAUSCHKA'S "INVENTIONS")
FADEL: Pianist and composer, Hauschka. His new album, "Philanthropy," is out today. Thank you so much.
HAUSCHKA: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF HAUSCHKA'S "INVENTIONS")
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