Installation: Toccata and Bruise (Celeste Oram)

Toccata & Bruise is a duo for piano and pianist that explores the musical concept of touch. During the piece, the pianist listens to Glenn Gould performing his piano transcription of Fantasie Contraria en sol dórico para órgano de Jan Sweelinck, grabada en Salzburgo en 1959. The audience barely perceives this recording, which functions as a sonic score with which the performer synchronises her actions with the video.

The piece is a transcriptive fantasy on Gould's transcription of Sweelinck's work. While the organ barely responds to touch, the piano is associated with the search for a perfect touch. The work thus transforms Sweelinck's counterpoint into a visual and gestural choreography of touch.

Its structure follows the three sections of the original work: opening fugue, central toccata, and final fantasy. Like a lost mould, the piano sounds disappear from the process, leaving only the trace of the gesture and touch that generated them.

Celeste Oram has worked closely with the Festival directors, Josefina Urraca and Guillermo Laporta, during her residency in New York, making this transatlantic collaboration possible.