contrahent (2020) – Nik Bohnenberger

With kind permission of performer Michael Cohen-Weissert


'contrahent' for Piano solo is to be performed with a wine glass as mallet.


The relationship between the two sound bodies could be simplified as the relationship between a mallet or hammer and a string and percussion instrument - with the glass, the player plays different parts of the sound corpus of the piano - but the glass, through its sound quality, also becomes a sound object when played on the piano; sound synthesis of both bodies is, however, the ultimate goal. Two very firmly coded objects are partially placed in new contexts, which nevertheless raises the question: does an object that stands for excess belong in the holiest of classical instruments? And isn't the designation "mallet" for a wine glass an oxymoron?

This piece was premiered on 5.12.2020 during 'Mehrlicht!Musik' festival organized by HfM Hanns Eisler and UdK Berlin.

video and editing: Hazal Kara, Deniz Şimşek
sound: Ton: Ole Jana, Markus Radtke, Jürgen Martin, Alexander Choeb, Malte Giesen and others