Helga Karen

​Helga Karen is doing her artistic research at the Doctoral School in Sibelius Academy, University of Arts. Helga's artistic research has two components - written (monograph) and musical (doctorate concerts). From the pianist to the contemporary musician - The development of the pianist’s roles through classics of contemporary music The focus of the research is on Karlheinz Stockhausen's piano pieces Klavierstücke. The concert series explores the development of the pianist’s role from the beginning of the Darmstadt school. It follows the change in the understanding of the piano, pianism and the pianist as a person and an interpreter during the past 70 years. The journey of three composers, Stockhausen, Boulez and Feldman, who all three inspired by the same Webern, took the music and the pianism into completely different directions. Monograph ​ Introduction to Karlheinz Stockhausen’s piano music - practical guide for a pianist Through the piano works of Stockhausen, Helga is exploring the roles of the pianist, the demands and the challenges that the pianist has to face, discovers the technical and mental difficulties that appear when practicing and performing the pieces and searches for the new methods to solve those problems. The goal is to explore Stockhausen’s piano music from an interpretation perspective identifying in detail the most unusual and critical pianistic issues of the repertoire. The problems will be described, verbalised, and approaches and solutions will be offered. The book will walk through the pieces together with the reader, untangling the complex practice and performance issues, in order to help the pianists not only to get familiar with Stockhausen’s piano pieces and the practice methods, but also give the tools to explore the contemporary music beyond that.

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