Record screening in the Planetarium - 24 Variations for Piano in Dolby Atmos

Experience Håkon Skogstad's latest album 24 Variations for Piano on the album release date on June 5th at the Planetarium (located in the Science Center, Trondheim). The album was recorded in Dolby Atmos surround sound through Øra Studio and here is a unique opportunity to experience the music in a sound system with 38 speakers placed around you on several levels. The system is the first of its kind in Norway and one of only six in the world.

Here you get 24 original compositions in 24 keys during a 360-degree journey through the solar system in comfortable cinema seats.

About the work:

24 Variations for Piano opens with an introductory main theme that can be described as a kind of “minimalist arietta”. The theme consists of 14 bars divided between the A and B parts of the main theme, and moves between C major and A minor – the latter of which is first clearly established in Variation No. 1. The theme is both tonally and stylistically flexible, and invites a wide range of musical genres. From this sense of unresolved openness, the listener is led through a journey via 24 strongly contrasting musical expressions in 24 different keys. Each movement is a variation on one or more of the small motifs that make up the main theme – sometimes clearly recognizable on the surface, other times hidden deeper in the texture, rhythmically or harmonically transformed.

Stylistically, the work draws inspiration from a wide range of musical styles and composers, including Chopin, Rachmaninov, JS Bach, Prokofiev, Debussy, Ravel, Grieg and Piazzolla, as well as more recent figures such as Horacio Salgán and Juan José Mosalini. As a cyclical composition, the work is also related to works such as Bach's Goldberg Variations, Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition and the Chopin Preludes.

The order of the 24 movements follows neither the circle of fifths nor a chromatic system, but is instead shaped by the dramaturgy of the music, where each “musical image” contrasts the one before it. Each movement can thus stand alone as a miniature, or be experienced as part of a larger cyclical whole – a musical journey where the final movement returns to the main theme of the opening, and A minor transforms into A major.