Especially for the concert ‘Laboratonium 5: Piano versus Organ’, the concert stage is transformed into a sound laboratory. Here, new tonal worlds are put to the test, tuning systems collide, and unexpected alliances emerge between instruments that are rarely heard together. In this fifth edition of Laboratonium, an imaginary experimental laboratory of sound, microtonality, innovation and research take centre stage. Early music is re-examined through a contemporary lens, brand-new works are heard for the first time, and boundary-pushing instruments reveal their full potential. All of this is performed by the virtuoso musicians Anne Veinberg (piano) and Ere Lievonen (organ), with the participation of the dedicated English flautist Carla Rees and the experienced electronic composer and performer Felipe Ignacio Noriega.
At the heart of the programme is the encounter between two unique keyboard instruments: the 96-tone piano, also known as the Carrillo piano, and the 31-tone organ, better known as the Fokker organ. These instruments are heard both together and separately, demonstrating how different divisions of the octave can reinforce and challenge one another.
The concert opens with a special world premiere: Variation on Dufay’s Nuper Rosarum Flores (2020) by the American composer Bill Alves, a work that has never been performed before. In this composition, Alves’s post-minimalist idiom merges with the musical legacy of the fifteenth-century composer Guillaume Dufay from the Burgundian Netherlands. Fragments and sound ideas from Dufay’s famous motet are transformed and re-examined by Alves within the 31-tone system. The piece is written for four hands on the Fokker organ and is performed by organist Ere Lievonen and pianist Anne Veinberg, two musicians who have frequently performed together, particularly within the Fokker organ concert series.
The instruments then meet in Morpheus (2017, revision 2026) by the Dutch composer Sander Germanus. At first hearing, the work sounds rich and harmonious, yet it simultaneously contains a continuous, slightly unsettling shimmer that never fully comes to rest. Germanus plays with timbre and tuning, allowing the music to hover between familiarity and disorientation. Halfway through the piece, the organist leaves the organ and takes a seat at the Carrillo piano, after which Lievonen and Veinberg continue playing four hands. At that moment it becomes clearly audible how remarkably the 96 tones of the Carrillo piano align with the 31 tones per octave of the Fokker organ: two different systems that do not exclude one another, but instead deepen each other.
In a new work by Off <>zz (a premiere), Anne Veinberg steps into the intersection of instrument and algorithm. Off <>zz is the live coding duo formed by Veinberg together with the Mexican composer, programmer and laptop artist Felipe Ignacio Noriega. The two have been working together for many years on the project ‘CodeKlavier‘, a programming language that emerges from the interaction between piano and laptop. While playing the Carrillo piano, Veinberg generates computer code live, which is interpreted by Noriega in real time and transformed into electronic sound. The result is a constantly evolving soundscape in which human touch and digital logic are inextricably linked.
International new repertoire is also heard in this concert. Suite 36 for Lumatone and piano in 36-EDO (2025) by the Finnish composer Juhani Nuorvala has not previously been performed in the Netherlands. The work combines a conventionally tuned grand piano with the Lumatone, a digital keyboard instrument that can be programmed in virtually any alternative tuning. The Lumatone consists of a honeycomb of hexagonal keys which, thanks to their isomorphic layout, make complex intervals and microtonal structures clear and playable. In this work the instrument is tuned in 36-EDO, a system with 36 tones per octave, making sixth-tones possible as well. With electric piano sounds, these microtonal lines wind their way between the familiar pitches of the acoustic grand piano, creating a fascinating and constantly shifting interplay. Nuorvala, based in Helsinki, has built up an extensive microtonal oeuvre and has previously composed several works for instruments and ensembles of the Huygens-Fokker Foundation, performed within the concert series of the unique 31-tone organ.
The programme concludes with the somewhat modernist composition Amsterdamned (2025) by Edward (Eddie) Clijsen for Kingma system alto flute, Fokker organ and Carrillo piano, in which tension and harmony continuously flow into one another. In this microtonal work, Clijsen explores the expressive space that emerges when the octave is redivided into 24, 31 and 96 tones per octave, allowing, despite the increased complexity, a richer spectrum of timbre, harmony and texture to arise, which calls for new organisational principles and instruments. For this work, Clijsen employed both formal, systematic approaches and intuitive compositional methods to explore and fuse the subtle possibilities of these tunings.
‘Laboratonium 5: Piano versus Organ’ is a concert that not only reveals how rich and expressive microtonal music can be, but also how imagination, technology and craftsmanship can together create new musical worlds. Anyone curious about sounds beyond the beaten track simply should not miss this unique musical laboratory.