Spiegelgasse Salon: Four Evenings of New Music
Each evening pairs one new piece with one old one chosen by the composer, and the pairing is argued about out loud before anything is played.
The room is a domestic one with a domestic piano, and the programme is built around what that instrument can honestly do. Nothing is amplified.
Three of the four pairings set a living composer against someone dead for two hundred years; the fourth sets a composer against her own piece from 2009 and is the evening people argue about on the stairs afterwards.
The composer stays for the second half of the evening, which is not a talk but a table, and which usually outlasts the music by an hour.
Sixty seats, sold in one release. Latecomers are seated between pieces, and the stairs are steep and unlit above the first landing.