Diamanda Galás, "De-formation: Second Piano Variations"
Anthony D'Amico | brainwashed | Posted on Nov 22, 2025 by Intravenal Sound Operations
This latest EP from the ever-compelling Diamanda Galás has had quite an interesting journey...
as it first began its life in an evolving larger work entitled "Das Fieberspital (The Fever Hospital)," which is a “musical setting of Georg Heym’s early 20th Century expressionist poem about patients stigmatized by yellow fever.” At some point, however, Galás concluded that “the piano skeleton had become its own work” and its (mostly improvised) performance was released as De-formation: Piano Variations back in 2020.
Five years later, she was inspired to ambitiously rework that piece for a Paris performance at the Pinault Collection celebrating the legacy of fellow iconoclastic composer Maryanne Amacher. Now in deconstructed, reconstructed, and characteristically volcanic new form, De-formation: Second Piano Variations presents Galás’ “definitive” performance of that visceral tour de force.
I will admit that I had somewhat modest expectations for this release, as this piece had already been released once and solo piano performances can often be quite a tough sell for me in general. Given that this particular pianist is Diamanda Galás, however, I figured that there must be something special enough about this piece to necessitate an ambitiously sharpened and re-shaped re-recording. Characteristically, of course, this performance is indeed mesmerizing and incendiary enough to warrant a resurrection, but I was legitimately fascinated by how much time and passion Galás poured into reworking “De-Formation” long before the Paris performance ever took place. Aside from “blasting through the original structure…block by block” and “sculpting the muscle of the source material” to create new phrasings and degrees of dynamic intensity, Galás also enlisted “a specialist in notating difficult piano music” (Thomas Feng) to create a score for the oft-improvised original recording and spent literal months experimenting with various foot pedal combinations.
I can certainly see how an exacting approach to foot pedals would be a central concern with this piece, as a couple of its defining traits are seismically rattling and rumbling low-end runs and long, lingering decays of murky dissonance. Crashing, percussive chords and tumbling, broken-sounding chromatic melodies with curdled notes also feature quite prominently.
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the brooding chords evoke a lonely vampiress performing a booming solo concerto in a remote castle nestled in the Carpathian mountains, but there is rarely a moment when Galás’ melodies are not colored by curdled harmonies or tumbling chromaticism.
Even more important is Galás’ dynamic virtuosity, however, as it elevates her wounded and broken melodies into something absolutely mesmerizing: chords crash like lightning, notes are violently cut off, melodies convulse or stumble off the beat in a feverish delirium, and long decays leave behind a murky fog of darkly uncomfortable dissonances. In short, this is a properly harrowing and emotionally intense piece of music. Much like the haunting poem that inspired it, “De-Formation” makes brevity a virtue, as Galás unleashes an absolutely rapturous (and appropriately expressionist) storm of visionary catharsis without ever overstaying her welcome or falling into a lull. Or as Heym himself may have put it, Galás made my innards feel like burning mountains with her monstrous spinning waltz. This is one hell of a memorable EP.