Wim Mertens

Wim Mertens at the Auditorium for the only Italian date of the Inescapable Tour 40th anniversary 1980-2020. Interesting. Perhaps this really is the right occasion to go back to seeing a concert after the dismal season of closures and home streaming, the only - though certainly not exhilarating - resource for live music in lockdown times. Along with the euphoria comes a pinch of regret: where did I leave Wim Mertens in recent years, the elusive Flemish composer, a rightful member of the sacred trinity of minimalism alongside Michael Nyman and Philip Glass? Not quite back in the days of Soft Verdict - the moniker behind which he hid at the time of the masterpiece "Struggle For Pleasure" - nor in the no less memorable days of his collaborations with Peter Greenaway in film (the epic soundtrack to "The Belly of an Architect" alongside Glenn Branca) and with Jan Fabre in theatre. Perhaps a dozen years later, around the time of the interesting "Integer Valor", in the late Nineties. And then? Then "his prolific output has seen him move through minimalism, ambient and the avant-garde without ever giving up melodic appeal", as the press release puts it. Right up to his latest album "The Gaze Of The West", written during lockdown, in which his music keeps evolving towards sounds further removed from minimalism.

So here we are, strictly spaced out in the seats of the Cavea, feeling the thrill of reliving a collective musical ritual, part of the ever-reliable Roma Europa Festival. It's a strange sight to see the Auditorium's bowl filling up in patches, leopard-spot style, without the usual elbow-to-elbow warmth of a sold-out crowd. These days, though, that already feels like a lot. Just as one has to make do with the bare-bones staging on stage: an Alfonsi piano in plain view, behind which the sixty-seven-year-old composer from Neerpelt will sit, and the rest of the stage reserved only for young Liesbeth Baelus on electrified violin. It will be up to her to weave melodic textures into Mertens's obsessive piano scores, casting glances full of emotion and deference in his direction.

"What nationality is he, anyway?" "I think he's Dutch, his name's Wim..." From the back rows come the usual tourist chatter typical of the Auditorium crowd. No matter, though, because the Belgian Wim is already at the piano, with an important dedication to make: "To my friend Ennio Morricone, who lived here in Rome for many years and passed away not long ago." He stands up and points a finger to the sky, warming the hearts of the audience.

After that, there's room only for his music, evocatively punctuated by the chirping of crickets and the occasional distant rumble of thunder.

This is a very different Mertens from the one we know, the one heard on "The Gaze Of The West", the album released at the start of summer. It's a tormented, tortuous record, with melodic labyrinths concealed behind slender, rarefied textures. In the Belgian ace's recent output, his formidable pianism pairs with a singular use of his voice, countertenor falsettos weaving between the notes through dreamlike litanies devoid of verbal meaning. Music and vocal solutions merge into a new sonic dimension, with results that are at times surprising and verge almost on Eastern mysticism.

Of course, the absence of the orchestra is keenly felt here, since it always lent a grandiloquent magic to his minimalist obsessions. But in the duels between piano and violin, those "crescendos" take on a new shape - more intimate, yet no less dramatic and moving.

Mertens is one of those "heretical" composers who see no border between pop and classical music, an artist capable of building an electronic work out of the sound of pinball machines ("For Amusement Only") and of humanising complex philosophical musings through sudden melodic flashes. But his classical rigour also leads him down paths of extraordinary sonic austerity, as in the tracks on "Un Respiro", the 2004 album in which he immerses himself in "petite musique de chambre", to use his own words.

After all that thunder and lightning, the rain finally arrives. But it's an almost liberating, cathartic rain, adding emotion to an evening in which the ghost of the pandemic looms ominously, made tangible by the empty spaces in the stands but also evoked by the universal message of brotherhood and spirituality among human beings that the Belgian's music has always carried.

Packed in (with masks on) under the Cavea's canopy, we watch open-mouthed the performance of wonders that have by now entered the history of contemporary music, such as "Maximizing The Audience" (1984), the piece composed for Jan Fabre's "The Power of Theatrical Madness", but also the poignant "Iris" - built entirely around a feverish yet soft piano phrasing interspersed with Mertens's dreamlike vocalisations - (from "Stratégie de la rupture", 1994), "Often A Bird" (from "Jardin Clos", 1996), with its magical sequence of chimes punctuating a radiant melodic opening for strings, here rendered by the angelic violin of the blonde Baelus. These are pieces that were gathered (often, alas, with new arrangements) in the 2019 box set "Inescapable", a limited-edition collection with 10 unreleased tracks and 61 of the most significant compositions of the last 40 years, for a total of 5 hours of music. Yet it's only a summary of a career of extraordinary prolificacy, one that has led him to record 70 albums and nearly 700 tracks.

The finale belongs entirely to the two great classics from his own back catalogue, pulled from the historic soundtrack to "The Belly Of An Architect": a sweet "Close Cover", brushed onto the piano with timeless grace but without losing the subtle thread of unease running through it, and then the immense "Struggle For Pleasure", a manifesto of the Flemish composer's romantic, visionary art, in which the absence of the orchestra inevitably weighs heavy, despite Baelus's flawless performance in sustaining the hypnotic repetitiveness of that postmodern progression of amorous feeling. The audience, in any case, appreciates it - and then some. It's an ovation for a Mertens in full empathy with his maximized audience, who thanks the crowd by pointing to every corner of a damp, glistening Cavea. The only regret is not being able to appreciate his scores in all their symphonic grandeur. That will have to wait for another time. For now, this small, intimate, collective ritual, soaked in rain and emotion, is enough.

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