If you’ve ever spent a few hours in the woods at night, when bugs click, trees grumble, creatures of indeterminate size and ferocity trundle through the undergrowth, and coyotes howl in roving choirs, then you’ll have some sense of what the composer Georg Friedrich Haas aims to accomplish in his wraparound work 11,000 Strings . Haas, an Austrian sage of microtonal music, has created his own sonic forest in the Park Avenue Armory’s Drill Hall, encircling the audience with 50 pianos (each of which has about 230 strings) and a chamber ensemble (Klangforum Wien) that included a contingent of thunderous percussion. For just over an hour, currents of gritty, glinting sound swirled across the hall, gathering into thick roars or thinning out into quiet frenzies.

Two elements made the event bewi

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