EVE RISSER - Des pas sur la neige

One of the crucial steps that led to the advent of contemporary music was surely the one tied to the identity of the piano: the realization that such an imposing, resonant instrument cannot be considered through its ivory keys alone, and that a wide-ranging examination is needed, one that exploits every crevice of the enormous black case, which is also made of wood and metal.

Since John Cage, the use of objects placed between the strings and the free use of the hands have become almost an obligatory practice, but perhaps it took the imagination of a "non-pianist" like Eve Risser to turn this instrument into an inexhaustible source of unusual sounds, juxtaposed with such awareness and precision that one might not believe it's a solo performance.

In the three sessions of "Des pas sur la neige", recorded in September 2013 in France, Risser makes use of mobile tools that keep the interaction with the piano strings forever different. The first piece has the temporal flexibility of Feldman's "Triadic Memories," while the second seems to descend from Cage's early percussion works, even before the revelation that led to the fundamental opus "Sonatas And Interludes." More than one listener has rightly noticed the echo of Horatiu Rădulescu, who with his sound icons – a sort of ready-made obtained from overturned pianos – had long ago shaped fascinating metaphysical landscapes.

The last, very long piece is not only the core of Risser's sonic research but also its most properly descriptive moment: a vast soundscape where the inputs become the steps of a long walk over crunching snow; a thin buzzing drone is rippled by objects sliding across the surface of the strings and the frame; bells, fans and tinfoil, scrapes and sudden lashes disfigure a picture that immediately recomposes itself, imperturbable.

The notes on the keys, pure and never dissonant, are at first light and stretched out in time, then insistent like the "Strumming Music" of Palestine. Past the twenty-minute mark the advance becomes heavy and desperate: the low strings are plucked and hammered with feral violence, an unreal tension dominates until the very end, in a scenario that borders on cruelty in its abuse of the instrument, as in a sacrificial rite that must necessarily culminate in a "tragedy of listening".

Indeed, the inspiration provided by the sense of absence in desert places is quite secondary to the interest raised by the very process through which Risser's research unfolds across the three sessions – with a mastery worthy of the dean of AMM, John Tilbury – patiently contemplating the fascinating "pianistic cardiogram" that takes shape one minute after another.

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16/06/2015