A prophet has no honor in his own country. Volker Bertelmann knows this only too well. He has toured half the world under his pseudonym Hauschka; in his hometown Düsseldorf, though, he performs only rarely. One of these rare moments was in March 2011. Bertelmann introduced his new album. It's called Salon des Amateurs and that's exactly where he presented it. The club in the bowels of the Kunsthalle may no longer be as hip as in its early days; as a musical laboratory, however, it is still unique in Düsseldorf.

On Salon des Amateurs, Hauscka returns to the sound that made him famous. The "prepared" piano stands in the foreground. Bertelmann manipulates his instrument in such a way that it no longer sounds like a piano, rather more like percussion or an electronic instrument. The technique seems more complicated than it is. Actually, "prepared" only means that Bertelmann makes do with everyday objects. He jams sandwich paper between the strings, lays erasers and bottle caps on top; sometimes he even tips a bag full of ping-pong balls into the piano. These interventions do not always go down very well. The concert at the renowned South by Southwest festival in the USA almost fell through because of Bertelmann's love of experimentation. The performance was to take place in a church but the cantor feared Hauschka would harm the piano. Only after tough negotiations, could the artist get started.

Those who take the manipulated piano for simple avant-garde bric-a-brac, err. The sound effects are well thought-out. The sandwich paper crackles like an old movie; the pinched-off strings sometimes let the piano sound like drums. Granted, some actions have a certain entertainment value, especially the pouring in of ping-pong balls. Yet it's obvious that Volker Bertelmann does not want to be considered a sensationalist. On his last album Foreign Landscapes, he used the prepared piano sparingly. The album had little to do with its precursors. Actually, it was no longer pop, more like chamber music.

The will to musical variation is a recurrent thread in Bertelmann's life. Aside from jazz, he has touched on nearly every type of music at least once. Viewers heard his first compositions on the German television series Ein Fall für zwei, meanwhile a quarter century back. In the 1990s, Bertelmann played in an indie band called God's Favorite Dog. Under the pseudonyms Music A.M. and Tonetraeger, followed electronic albums and club sounds. Little remains of this digital time in Hauschka's music today. At some points, his prepared piano sounds like a preprogrammed loop (an interesting reversal of the principle that electronic instruments are supposed to imitate "real" ones).

Bertelmann's music enjoys popularity, especially abroad. His recording contract is also indicative of this. Like his Rhenish colleagues Mouse on Mars, Hauschka signed with an English label. FatCat Records in Brighton publishes his music. Nevertheless, the artist sticks up for his hometown: "I'm glad I live in Düsseldorf and hope a lot more great music from here will be heard elsewhere."