Serve! Backhand! Counterattack! Forehand! Topspin! Block! Smash!
Margaret Leng Tan! Moritz Eggert! Frederike Möller! Karlheinz Essl! Mats O Hansson! Jana de Troyer! Phyllis Chen!
21 & 22.11.2025 – 8 PM
resonanzraum
Tickets info to follow!
Fasten your seatbelts and hold on tight! The Toy Piano Weekend 2025 is stepping up the pace: not only with a virtual ping-pong match with sensors and invisible players, but also with two quartets for toy pianos and blenders, as well as music boxes with perforated tape, iPhone cooling fans and talking instrumentalists.
But don’t worry: before anyone gets dizzy from all that wild rotation, infinitely delicate, gentle sounds of straws, supermarket receipts and rustling paper bags will provide enough calm and relaxation.
But that’s not all: with toy piano legend Margaret Leng Tan from New York and creative powerhouse Moritz Eggert from Munich, the Toy Piano Weekend this time can boast two icons of new music as guest performers. Frederike Möller, founder of the Toy Piano Festival Düsseldorf, will guide the program as presenter and performer, and with Karlheinz Essl, Mats O Hansson and Huihui Cheng, several composers long associated with the festival will once again contribute premieres.
Another significant part of the program will be contributed by Sascha Lino Lemke with ID…a, a large-scale epic about the life of Ida Dehmel, who 99 years ago founded GEDOK in Hamburg as a representative body for women artists of all kinds, and who was later driven to suicide by the National Socialists. The numerous choreographic elements of the work will be staged under the direction of award-winning director and Ida Dehmel specialist Birgit Kajtna.
As always, young composers will also be featured, including Jana de Troyer, Kiloh Lee, Niko Yin and 11-year-old Anastasha Suchin. And last but not least, everything will turn into a dazzling birthday party, as the festival also celebrates Margaret Leng Tan’s 80th and Moritz Eggert’s 60th birthdays.
So raise the curtain for flying ball relays, the most unusual settings and instrumentations, and not least two true legends of the international piano and toy piano scene: Serve! Counter! Smash! The Toy Piano Weekend 2025 surpasses itself.
Day I: 21.11.2025 – 8:00 PM Concert
Mats O Hansson WP for Non-Piano Ensemble with 4 mixers
Erik Griswold ‘Dragon Ladies Don’t Cry’ (selections)
– Secret Room
– Dragon Lady Calling
– El Chapo
– One
for toy piano and toys
Anastasha Suchin ‘Rosie’. A Musical Horror Tale in Four Scenes (2024) for masked narrator, toy piano, bell, petals, telephone
Intermission
Huihui Cheng ‘Disrupted Reflection’ (2025) for saxophones and electronics
Genoël von Lilienstern ‘sun rise tool’ (2011) for toy piano
Sascha Lino Lemke ‘ID….A’ (2024) for four pianists, one grand piano and electronics
Day II: 22.11.2025 – 8:00 PM Concert
– Carousel
– Cobwebbed Carousel
for toy piano, music box and video
– Kassino Interlude
for toy piano, sound objects
Video by Rob Dietz
Raphael Brandstäter (1999, Bielefeld) ‘Zwei Melodramen’ (I. The Village, II. Black) WP after poems from the collection ‘Rückenwind’ by Sarah Kirsch for soprano and keyboard four hands
Karlheinz Essl ‘T.U.M.P.’ WP for melodica and electronics
Niko Yin WP for toy piano
Intermission
Moritz Eggert ‘Hämmerklavier XXXIII: Ultra’ (Part 1, selections) for piano
Kiloh Lee ‘In Cue’ (2022) for 2 table tennis performers and electronics
Nicole Lizee ‘ZonelyHearts: Episode VI: Phone Tap’ (2022) for toy piano quartet, rotary telephones & soundtrack
Jana de Troyer ‘A Delicate Sustainable Response’ WP for Non-Piano Ensemble
Performers
Toy pianos, toy instruments, performance: Margaret Leng Tan
Piano: Moritz Eggert
Toy piano, moderation: Frederike Möller
Saxophone: Jana de Troyer
Soprano: Marcia Lemke-Kern
Non-Piano Ensemble: Bernhard Fograscher, Daria-Karmina Iossifova, Jennifer Hymer, Steven Tanoto
Electronics: Sascha Lino Lemke, Jacob Sello
Director (ID…a): Birgit Kajtna