Fortepian dla wszystkich (Piano For All)
- Andrzej Bieżan

Reconstuction of a project/composition Restaurant, presented by Andrzej Bieżan during a Zdzisław Piernik recital in January 1976 at Warsaw’s legendary Contemporary Gallery, founded and run (until 1974) by Janusz and Maria Bogucki. Because of heavy-handed censorship interventions into artistic works at that time, Bieżan called his project a composition, wishing to avoid any contact with the Main Office for the Control of the Press, Publications, and Public Performances. Oficials from the latter were particularly zealous when dealing with said Gallery, looking to “detect concepts threatening the constitutional bases of the Socialist state,” but were often more tolerant with contemporary music works. For objective reasons, Bieżan used a Calisia upright piano for the first performance. 

The idea of this installation consists of intervening into the instrument’s tuning so heavily as to render popular tunes dificult to identify, while improvisations can take advantage of the unusual register of this common instrument (a concert grand in the case of this reconstruction). 

The composer issued unconventional instructions as to the rendition of form, pitch, and time organisation. 

Marcin Krzyżanowski