Piano, piano, piano, piano (as Elmer Fudd might say) along with double bass and electronics are the basis for Kalaisan Kalaichelvan’s Poitu Varen which premiered at Hugh’s Room last night as part of the Soundstreams TD Encounters series.

It’s a complex work built around four extracts about pilgrimage from Anne Carson’s The Anthropology of Water.  There are indeed four pianos but only one pianist.  The other three pianos have transducers on the soundboards that create resonance in the open strings when an appropriate sound is played through them.  Chris Pruden on piano and Zoe Markle on double bass use a wide variety of techniques (and some improvisation though how much is predetermined I’m not entirely sure; most of the piano but less of the double bass I think).  Walker Grimshaw kind of quarterbacks the performance deciding how much of what to send where as well as mixing in prerecorded electronics.

With four text extracts the work falls fairly naturally into four movements.  The first is double bass heavy with lots of extended technique and just a bit of piano at the end creating a kind of meditative mood.  For the second movement the double bass is laid aside but it’s much denser with a lot of use of the auxiliary pianos to make complex layers of sound.  In the third movement Pruden moves over to play one of the upright pianos in prepared mode while the composer briefly takes the primary keyboard.  Markle is back too so this gets really heavily textured.  Then the final movement features some more virtuosic piano music that starts lyrical then gets busier and more complex.  The electronics are sparingly used here and then finally the double bass comes back in for a rather plaintive and questioning final section.

It’s a complex and challenging piece and quite long at 45 minutes or so.  Great virtuosity is required from the performers coupled with a certain willingness to engage from the audience is required for success I think and it got both last night.  The performance was followed by a short but informative Q and A which really did provide some insight into the hows and whys of the piece.

Photo credits: Cylla von Tiedemann