After an often miserable and grey week, for once, the evening sky presents itself only tainted by a few clouds. The city is vibrating with anticipation of the weekend this Friday, and a fire crackles in front of Bogen F. The venue, located in one of the arches of a train viaduct in Zurich, is buzzing with people. The trains rattle over the nearby tracks.

A crowd of middle- to older-aged people is sipping beers and the occasional glass of white wine. It's almost your stereotypical classical music audience, but not quite.
Then again, Martin Kohlstedt is also not quite your stereotypical pianist. One could argue, not even close, and some purists might even entirely disapprove of his approach.

The concert on this evening is sold out. In fact, so is even the additional show two days later. Rescheduled two times due to Covid-19, the concert is now happening. And honestly, I'm not here on an official reporting mission, but to finally accept the tickets I got for my 30th birthday almost three years ago.

My first encounter with Martin Kohlstedt was on the 27th of October, 2017. A bit after 7 pm, he took the stage in the church of Kaltern, South-Tirol, at the «Kaltern Pop Festival». And I was baffled by his performance, writing in the festival diary:

Pianist Kohlstedt transports piano sounds into undiscovered dimensions through loops and synthesisers. Imposing like a supernova, lovely like a starry sky and dangerous like an asteroid belt are his pieces. Yet, like outer space, his compositions never lose their fascination despite their vastness.

But the most memorable experience remains the 2019 feature for Negative White—where I talked more profoundly with Kohlstedt about his music and unique process. «I'm a little boy who doesn't want to be defined by anything,» Kohlstedt said back then.

His music, in recorded form, defies the traditional definition of songs. They are fragments, sketches, and ideas. Kohlstedt refers to his songs, each named with three letters, as vocabulary. «There are the old piano pieces, the yearning vocabulary of a time when you didn't know exactly but rather dreamed and shot. At some point, electronics interfered, made it all real, crept in almost like a threat from the side, questioned everything,» he explained in the feature.

This contrasting discourse is the source of energy driving him to keep cultivating his vocabulary.

With his now extensive vocabulary, spanning several albums—or maybe: dictionaries—improvisation is the lubricant of his concerts. There is no set list and no pre-defined programme. Instead, it's pure uncertainty, which is already outrageous for most artists and audiences alike.

But Kohlstedt deals with it openly, and many in Bogen F already know what to expect. However, his transparency always releases the tension and expectation—if only a little.

Almost like an alchemist, Kohlstedt bends over his workstation, but instead of ingredients, he strikes keys, pushes buttons, and turns knobs. The result is breathtaking. Kohlstedt leads us into his labyrinth, and despite knowing it, you still constantly wonder: How far ahead does he plan? Is there even a plan? Or did I just glimpse a brief moment of doubt when his seeking gaze crossed over the instruments?

In those split seconds of uncertainty shared with the audience, the tension is sky-high. But on that evening, Kohlstedt suddenly counters these moments always with inspiration and intuition. «The interaction between this simple sound, which actually wants to be what it is, and all the limits you set yourself all day. This ambivalence is an incredible drive to leave more and more variables loose and to strive for an almost one hundred per cent free concert, where you don't play towards an end,» he said in 2019.

A Profoundly Human Experience

And so we follow deeper into his maze, and Kohlstedt, as our guide, remains as clueless as we are about what may wait behind the next turn. Once, it's an apocalyptic dub-like sound, stomping heavily beneath the stone arch. Or it's some kind of quirky jazz symphony. Yet, there's this all-encompassing tendency to the cinematic—whether the composition resides in intimacy or grows into a soaring, rumbling, gigantic monster.

Kohlstedt's approach is barely a recipe but more a mindset that makes for a captivating experience. But also an exhausting one because it demands your undivided attention. As for the artist himself, there's no security, no recognisable lifeline to hold on to, but only the fragments of vocabulary you know from the recordings.

And so every evening with Martin Kohlstedt becomes a unique exercise in vulnerability, empathy, and liberation from expectations. An experience between artist and audience unlike any other, but it is also profoundly human as risk and failure are not just a danger but an accepted part of that shared moment.

Rain starts pouring from the sky as soon as I leave the apartment. Not an unexpected event, yet almost a comical setting for my first concert review in over three years.

Shortly after, I find myself climbing the steep slopes to «Bäumli», a little park draped on the hillside. With the forest in the back, a panoramic view of Winterthur, Switzerland, opens up towards the West. But depressingly grey, low-hanging clouds cover all, and the gushing wind drives the rain into my face.

And in some corner of my head, I ask myself: Why am I doing this to myself?

The scenery at «Bäumli» looks all familiar: A small stage, a couple of food and beverage stands alongside the low stone wall. The only thing missing: rows of chairs. They were here when «Ante Konzerte», a small showcase festival, debuted in 2021 with Covid-19 measures still in place. This memory seems far away—almost like a trauma you're desperately trying to forget.

So I sit down on a bench, dried half-heartedly with my tote bag. A guy approaches me. Let's call him Steve. He drinks one bottle of Mate after the other like it's some kind of holy water. Steve usually listens to melodic techno.

But a day ago, his brother sent him a song by Betterov. «I've listened to Olympia three times in a row. It totally flashed me,» he goes on. Then, while looking for live dates, he discovered the «Ante Konzerte» and decided to come the same day.

Although the pandemic might now—also officially—be a thing of the past, it left a deep scar on the music business. While pre-sales have been a struggle before, they still haven't recovered. And with the outlook of walking up to a not very remote but not very central place for a concert in the rain: It's a hard sell… Not everybody is like Steve.

Praised Acts

Let's talk about the acts of the festival's opening night. Manuel Bittdorf, born in 1994 in what is pretty much the heart of Germany, as Betterov. His first single, Dynamit, was released in 2019, followed by an EP in 2020 and finally, last year's debut album Olympia.

Olympia was received relatively well. Benedikt Kendler writes in his review for «Musikexpress» about Betterov's sonic signature: «The furiously melancholic guitar riffs, placed in prominent places, help Betterov's multi-faceted, rough and occasionally pleasantly brittle voice to achieve the greatest emotional intensity.» Kendler concludes the sound as a mix between indie-rock and post-punk.

In October 2022, I featured Bis zum Ende, one of the album's songs, in a Weekly5 edition. I wrote:

Bis zum Ende is a perfect example of Betterov's qualities: A fast-paced track, exhilarating and breathlessly delivered, accompanied by lyrics that capture adolescents' doubts, fears, and self-reflection. Despite its depressive premise, Betterov always manages to transform negativity into sparks of optimism. Bis zum Ende is no different and remains deep down a hymn to hope.

The role of the opening act at the premier night of «Ante Konzerte» in Winterthur falls to Walter Frosch. It's a duo from Schaffhausen, Switzerland's most northern canton, and was named after a legendary German football player who smoked 60 cigarettes a day and called the pub «his biggest enemy».

In 2020, the band by Mike Saxer and Rune Dahl Hansen was hyped by Swiss national broadcaster SRF. And shortly, Tim Wirth wrote in «Züri Tipp» a piece full of praise:

The song Searching Hands, for example, is simply brilliant. A guitar strums, then comes a synthesiser melody, Dahl Hansen's voice far in the background, happy apocalypse, like a good film that portrays life as it is: ambivalent. A comic mix of happiness and tragedy.

Like Betterov, the band were previously featured in Weekly5 with their single Under A Spell. My takeaway from a bit more than a year ago: «Walter Frosch build an impressive wall of sound, drowning the already muffled voice even more, giving Under A Spell actually a feeling of being exactly that: not in possession of complete control, but being under a spell. As a result, the track has a borderline psychedelic, trance-like quality.»

So why am I doing this to myself?

Well, one part of the answer is that I get to see two acts I previously wrote about for the first time on stage. More on the second part in a moment. Now, the performances.