“11,000 Strings” a sonic spectacular that fails to touch the heart
The title 11,000 Strings promises something grand, and indeed Georg Friedrich Haas’ piece is large-scale in physical scope, duration, and ambition. This is a piece for 50 pianos (the 11,000 strings) and the 25 instrumentalists of the Klangforum Wien.
The ensemble and 50 pianists played the North American premiere Tuesday night in the massive Wade Thompson Drill Hall in the Park Avenue Armory, a seeming ideal fit of performance, work and space. Running for the week, this is installed in the round, but with the audience seated in the middle and the musicians on a low platform that surrounds the listeners.
If that implies being in the eye of a storm, that was very much the experience Tuesday night, and it was full of fascination. With this setup, the sound swirls around, through, and over the audience. Sound is the key word here—this is a composition that is about producing massive combinations of pitched sounds as shapes that form and change through time. The direction progresses through a series of such sonic shapes, rising and falling in dramatic gestures.
Melody and rhythm are irrelevant, but harmony is essential. The pianos are tuned with tiny adjustments of equal temperament toward just intonation, but not all the way there. The pianos are further tuned in relation to each other; what Haas in the program explains is exactly one-fiftieth of a semitone off of a perfect fifth becomes, after going through all the instruments, a perfect fifth one semitone higher than equal temperament.
That is just one element in the cloud of sound, though one that gives it a sense of shimmering life—within a massive sound wave there are particles bouncing off one another, albeit in an interior space, with the concert rituals of a stage, lights, and a silent crowd. This a performance in the sense of artifice. But with sound coming from every direction, ideas passing around the ring, developing in space as well as time, it’s just a hair’s breadth from being in the soundscape of a city or a forest, with birds singing to each other from every direction.
None of the sounds were bird-like, though this is a work of high artificial musical art that has more of the organic quality of nature then most music that tries to emulate it, like John Luther Adams’ works. The core of timbres, tuning, and space produced some incredible things. At times, it was like being in the eye of a hurricane of cold metal; the mass of pianos with stringed instruments sounded like 11,000 voices ululating; the combination of percussion and low brass was like thunder frozen in mid roll.
The Armory space makes this all possible, and in one way it was ideal. The size allowed the in-the-round setup, and the reverb and decay in the hall gave the pieces of sound thrown around the chance to mesh and produce those marvelous qualities, while still transparent enough to hear small details from individual instruments.
In another way, the Armory was the cause of the performance’s major problem. This was a strange combination of something that gripped the mind and left the heart indifferent. This was heard, not felt, like a scientific demonstration or a magic trick that impressed the intellect but wasn’t designed to move the emotions.
Of course, 11,000 Strings is something of a science experiment, but it communicates with sound which touches the listener’s body. The usual intimacy of that was missing. It seemed like the most profound effects were heading over the audience’s heads, up into the rafters, and that one was experiencing the shadow or outline—impressive as that was —not the essence.
This was a shame, because the results of Haas’ experiment were something to hear, and one wanted to be touched and moved by them. That’s what this piece is about, Haas explaining the technique and form were about the communal feeling of spirituality. Try as one might, the fundamental vibrations never pressed into the body, even from close proximity. Haas’ note mentions Horațiu Rădulescu, and one also thought of Giacinto Scelsi and the doom metal band Sunn O))), artists who make sounds designed to reveal other dimensions in the soul. These 11,000 strings do fill the Armory but ultimately miss their target.
11,000 Strings continues through October 7. armoryonpark
Posted Oct 01, 2025 at 8:20 pm by Kym canter
Very thoughtful and thought-provoking review by George Grella.
Posted Oct 02, 2025 at 12:46 pm by Mana
Thank you for articulating this! I had very similar thoughts after seeing it.