Steve Reich - Piano Phase (first part, solo)
54Piano Phase is a very interesting piece of experimental music by Steve Reich. It's usually played by two pianists, and the idea is this that both pianists play the exact same thing, exact that one of them sometimes plays slightly faster than the other. The original clean phrase then becomes messy, until we reach a point where the faster piano is exactly one note ahead of the other one. At this point, the faster piano goes back to the original tempo, and thus plays everything one note ahead, in other words there is a phase of 1 between the two players. Continue like this, reaching phase 2, 3, ... all the way to 12, where they get back in sync.
There has been a few records of crazy people individually playing this on two pianos. But with the magic of digital pianos, we can in fact do it on one piano now! Here I play with the sound of a Yamaha CFX on my right hand and Bösendorfer Imperial on my left.
This is more of a "proof of concept" than a real performance - I'm only playing the first part of the piece, and my right hand influences the left too much in that the tempo increases overall. Maybe I'll do the full thing one day?... If I'm crazy enough.
Performing this really feels insane though. First there's the whole "letting the right hand speed away from the tempo" thing, but it's incredibly easy to get mixed up in what you're doing. In fact, too much concentration is a bad thing here, in several takes I ended up messing the left hand part because I was trying too hard to figure out which notes I was supposed to be playing.