We invite you to the sixth concert in the pssst series, curated by OOO Association as part of Trenčín 2026. Admission is free, but registration is required: tootoot.fm/en/events/6a554f9e4e5f28ebcf29255b
Miroslav Beinhauer – The Sixth-Tone Harmonium
Concert for Alois Hába’s Sixth-Tone Harmonium | Slovak Premiere
Duration: 65 min | No language barrier
The unique sixth-tone harmonium was built in the 1920s to the specifications of Czech composer Alois Hába, who sought to move beyond the limitations of the conventional twelve-tone octave in his compositional practice. The instrument was constructed by the August Förster workshop, with its production financed through a public fundraising campaign to which President Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk also contributed.
Today, only three such instruments exist in the world, and just one of them remains playable. It is housed in Prague as part of the collection of the National Museum of the Czech Republic. At the end of September 2026, it will travel to Trenčín for a single evening, where Czech pianist Miroslav Beinhauer will perform on it as part of Trenčín 2026.
Beinhauer is the only performer in the world who has mastered this extraordinary instrument. Over the past several years, he has commissioned new works for the sixth-tone harmonium from internationally acclaimed composers including Bernhard Lang, Klaus Lang, Marc Sabat, Georg Friedrich Haas, Arash Yazdani, and others. The closing concert of the pssst series presents two works that frame Beinhauer’s long-standing exploration of the instrument: a commissioned composition by American minimalist Phill Niblock alongside a work by Alois Hába himself.
Miroslav Beinhauer
Born in 1993, Miroslav Beinhauer is a pianist and sixth-tone harmonium performer specialising in contemporary music and twentieth-century repertoire. He studied at the Janáček Academy of Performing Arts in Brno with Helena Weiser, at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna under Jan Jiracek von Arnim, and at the Royal Conservatory Ghent, where he studied with Daan Vandewalle.
Programme
Alois Hába
III. Adagio, Op. 37, for Sixth-Tone Harmonium (1928) – 4 min
Phill Niblock
Harmonius for Sixth-Tone Harmonium (2022) – 60 min
