Customer Reviews

The Bells

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Nils Frahm is a young German pianist, born in 1982. The Bells is a solo piano album, improvised and recorded over two nights in November 2008 in a Berlin church. Five and a half hours of music was condensed into an impressive, 40 minute recital.

Whilst harmonically, formally and gesturally the music doesn't break any new ground, I feel it is never banal or cloying. More neo-classical than jazzy, we are somewhere in the territory explored by Brad Mehldau, Keith Jarrett or Vasilis Tsabropoulos. Frahm does not have the stature (yet) of these giants in the contemporary solo piano niche, but what ties him to these men is the basically uplifting and hymnic vein that runs through the whole recital. His tone - lean, but full and deep - makes it easy and rewarding for the listener to connect. In some tracks (Said and done, Down down, My things) he really reaches for the level of exultation that we find in some of Mehldau's most brilliant extemporisations. The recital is short but it is well sequenced. There is not a weak moment in a natural flow between rapture and introspection which ends rather laconically. Throughout one senses a disciplined and authoritative musical imagination, a passion that is kept in check by a desire for understatement and a genuine identification with the instrument.

The recording has a lot of presence. 2 mikes at the piano and 3 more to record the resonant acoustics of the church. At one point the bells of the Grunewaldkirche intrude gently in the musical proceedings. But they are only a natural complement to an affirmative musical fabric in which their celebratory intonations are deeply woven into.

I look forward to hearing more from Nils Frahm.

I simply prefer Wintermusik over this album. Some tracks are too crashing or sentimental for my taste. Frahm is still an excellent neo classical composer though, and it is still an enjoyable listen.