Some of the pieces being presented in the Music Gallery’s two-day, three-concert Cold War Songbook, which starts tonight, call for a prepared piano.
This does not mean a quick polish or two-hours of warmup, or even a last-minute tuning.
A prepared piano is one where the normal sound is changed by inserting objects under its lid, changing the way the hammers hit the strings, or blocking off certain strings to muffle them or change their timbre.
In the case of these two pieces by John Cage, performed by Vicky Chow, who is at the Music Gallery tonight, you could say that this prepared piano is screwed. Close your eyes, and you would never know this is a piano:
John Terauds