Whereas all my other piano works are anything but easy to master technically and artistically, I saw myself confronted with a new challenge in Doppelspiel ("Double-play") for piano four hands. An idea developed by Franz Xaver Ohnesorg, in conjunction with Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Tamara Stefanovich, and proposed to several composers with a view to a project for the Ruhr Piano Festival, involved writing a piano piece for young players that was to be performable both in a two-hand and a four-hand version and not too difficult. In this way, Solo play for piano two hands, and a four-hand, somewhat enriched variant with the title Duo play, came into being. Because I had so much fun composing this, I did not want to stop at just one piece, and extended it into a little cycle of five four-hand pieces that could easily be mastered by good young pianists. All the pieces are composed in free atonality.
