By Eyal Hareuveni
French music writer Joël Pagier had a sharp observation about the evocative,
poetic aesthetics of French master hyper-pianist Sophie Agnel. Pagier writes
that in Song, Agnel’s only third solo album (following Solo, Vand’Oeuvre,
2000, and Capsizing Moments, Emanem, 2009), “the obstinate metamorphoses of
the keyboard call forth the monstrous organicity of the glowing steel in the
instrument’s belly”.
The seven-movement Song was captured during Agnel’s sessions at Instants
Chavirés in Montreuil in 2022 and 2024, a venue with which she has enjoyed a
long-standing complicity. The classically-trained pianist, who escaped from
jazz, transforms the prepared piano with extended, post Johen-Cage
techniques into a vivid, vibrating organism. An instrument that sings a set
of dramatic poems that begins and ends with the voice of French soprano
vocalist Mauricette Millot, orchestrated into a playful but irreverent song.
Agnel has a singular, often radical sonic vision that employs the
hyper-piano to sketch abstract, lyrical and sensual textures, always full of
unpredictable, suggestive and highly resonant imagination and invention.
Song realized this vision in its most refined and highly poetic form. It is
a tightrope walk over the piano’s vibrant strings, or a profound reading of
the infinite sonic possibilities of the modern keyboard. Pagier adds that
“despite the modernity of its very conception, Song reveals itself like a
private photo album, a wordless story in which moments of life follow one
another, where feelings pass through the generations”.
Agnel convinces the listeners to lose familiar preconceptions about what it
is to “play the piano” and open their minds to the imaginative musical
landscapes where the keyboard is only part of the game. It is an inspiring
game, and the listening experience to Song is like reading a fascinating
book of poems whose dramatic construction is so addictive that you can’t
help but turn the pages. Song is a true masterpiece.