NPR

First Listen: Hauschka, 'What If'

The pianist creates a singular electronic language rooted in the past but reaching to the future.
Hauschka's new album, <em></em><em>What If</em>, comes out March 31.

The great Beethoven specialist András Schiff says, "Whatever we do on the piano is a collection of illusions." If that's true, then Volker Bertelmann, the German pianist who goes by the single name Hauschka, is a master illusionist.

Over a span of eight albums and a dozen in the 1940s, Hauschka inserts all manner of doodads — scraps of aluminum, ping-pong balls and other household items — into the bowels of the instrument, transforming a normal piano into a quirky battery of percussion.

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