Conor Hanick: 'Book of Sounds'

Praised as one of his generation’s most inquisitive interpreters of music new and old whose “technical refinement, color, crispness and wondrous variety of articulation benefit works by any master,” (The New York Times) pianist Conor Hanick interprets the rarely performed Book of Sounds (Das Buch der Klänge) by German composer Hans Otte (1926-2007) with a voice on the piano unlike any other. The 12-movement minimalist solo piano work, written between 1979-1982, demonstrates the full range of dynamics, timbre, and resonance of the piano in a spiritual and meditative juxtaposition of sound and silence. Hanick offers two intimate performances which take full advantage of the glistening acoustics of The Dome. 

In Otte's words, "This Book of Sounds rediscovers the listener as a partner of sound and silence, who in the quest for his world, wishes for once to be totally at one with sound. It rediscovers the piano as an instrument of timbre and tuneful sound with all its possibilities of dynamics, colour and resonance. The Book of Sounds rediscovers playing as the possibility of experiencing oneself in sound, of becoming at one in time and space with all the sounds around one. It rediscovers a world of consonant experience which could only now be written because of a totally changed consciousness of sounds on earth."

Read more about the background of this intriguing work. Click the photo below to read Hanick's full bio.