Putting 50 pianos in a room creates a sense of occasion. On Saturday, I heard Georg Friedrich Haas’s “11.000 Saiten” (“11,000 Strings”), for 50 uprights tuned in ascending intervals of two cents and the contemporary music ensemble Klangforum Wien, at the Holland Festival in Amsterdam. Although the piece premiered in August 2023 in Bolzano, Italy, and has since been performed at the Wien Modern and Prague Spring festivals, the pre-concert excitement was palpable. Many people arrived early to secure good seats, and strangers chatted as they waited for the performance to start. They seemed jolted out of new-music-concert somnolence by such blunt, physical proof of raw ambition: the gigantic Gashouder was full of instruments. That “11.000 Saiten” didn’t actually get going until the second attempt was a sign of its choreographic difficulties, but also a reminder that enormous energies must be released carefully.
Unlimited access to our
