He might be the most popular solo pianist on earth at the moment but the Berlin-based “neo-classical” star Nils Frahm will be the first to admit that he’s not a classical pianist of any description. In this two-hour show there is little harmony or chordal development, scarcely any improvisation, and – with the exception of the jagged, nerve-wracking, Michael Nyman-ish piano solo Hammers – little virtuosity. What you get in spades, however, is texture – something that the classical conservatoires and jazz modules have always ignored.
You can buy the sheet music for Frahm’s piano solos, but the notes that he rattles out on his panoply of keyboards are almost incidental. What’s important is the tone; the grain; the satisfying way in which each studio-crafted voicing plonks and zings and bounces around the auditorium.
Frahm even jokes about these limitations. “People seem to like that track where I play one chord for seven minutes,” he deadpans. “If I presented that at some really good music school they’d tell me it’s not even a track. It’s not even an idea.”
Indeed, placing Frahm in the “classical” racks is a category error. His methodology has always been that of a dance music producer: using hypnotic repetition, delayed climaxes, and the kind of mutating voicings you find in filtered disco. The irony is that, when he moves into actual rave music, playing from his latest album All Melody, it doesn’t really work, at least not in this sit-down venue. It’s technically impressive to see him loop beats and basslines in real time, leaping between two U-shaped banks of keyboards – including a harmonium, a toy piano, a Fender Rhodes, a Steinway grand, a homemade organ, a Roland synth and a heavily dampered upright piano – but the results are rather generic, like a preset voicing on a home organ.
What works, however, are the piano solos. These are internalised raves; quiet riots; exercises in acoustic acid house that transport you to a higher plane while remaining oddly static.
