Einar Steen-Nøkleberg - Nordheim Beethoven Nordheim (2007)

“There are many possible ways of varying the reverberation in a piano. With the help of the pedals different types of interference producing a variety of colours can be singled out. In order to get these ideas entirely under control, I had to compose Listen, a work devoted to the ebbing existence of a complex of timbres. I wanted to get behind and under the sound when I wrote this strange piece in 1971.

I intended, like my colleague Beethoven, to render these little-regarded phenomena audible and eventually accessible – in a similar way to opus 111, perhaps.

After many performances of Listen, the mechanics of the music began to reveal new timbres, and I decided to put my experience of electronic music to use. Everything the pianist plays is recorded and fed back to the pianist and the audience. Everything that is recorded via delay or timbre modulation reaches the listener’s ears and emotions once again in constantly changing strata of sound. That is how Listen – Inside Outside came into being”.
Arne Nordheim