Jo David Meyer Lysne: For Renstemt Klaver

For as long as it has existed, it seems as if the piano has been subject to opinions and experiments of various types. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the player piano was a popular self-playing piano with a mechanism that operated the piano action using perforated paper or metallic rolls to play popular tunes.

Later on, it became more fashionable for pianists to play inside the piano lid, for example by striking or plucking strings, by vibrating strings using an ebow and/or inserting items such as door keys or ping pong balls onto the strings, which made some sounds unlike an untreated piano. In addition, opinions differ greatly about the ideal tuning to make a piano sound as good as possible.

All of which brings us to Jo David Meyer Lysne, a Norwegian guitarist, composer and instrument maker born in 1994 in Førde, Norway, who studied music at Sund Folk college from 2013 to 2014, then improvised music at Norwegian Academy of Music from 2014 to 2018, and composition there from 2018. He is now based in Gvary in the Norwegian county of Telemark. Prior to For Renstemt Klaver (which translates as For Justly Tuned Piano), Lysne had released four albums dating back to when he was still a student: his debut Meander (Ǿra Fonogram, 2017) with Mats Eilertsen, Henger I Luften (Hubro, 2019) with bass and cello, Kroksjø (Hubro, 2020), again with Eilertsen, and Spektralmaskin (Sofa, 2024), an album of tubist Peder Simonsen's on which Lysne played guitars as on the other three albums.

Despite the fulsome praise that those early Lysne albums received, particularly Henger I Luften, none of his previous work was preparation for For Renstemt Klaver. The key to that is a new variation of the piano, developed by Lysne himself. Mounted on steel bars within the piano are electric magnets, one for each of the eighty-eight keys, that are connected by wires; the magnets come down to the strings and, as they vibrate at the strings' own frequencies, the instrument's notes sound.

Because piano keys are not struck to sound a note, but vibrated by magnets to create notes that do not immediately fade away, the instrument is not identifiable as a piano straight away; maybe it will take time for listeners to recognise it. Judging by the music here, Lysne intends to use his version of a piano as an instrument to be played rather than one that plays from scores as player pianos did. The six pieces that he wrote for this album are very different from one another and sound as if they were created to demonstrate what Lysne's piano is capable of.

Listened to as music, rather than demonstrations of a new musical instrument, the six pieces (heard on the YouTube sample below) are melodic and easy on the ear, the type of music one wants to hear repeatedly. As Lysne plays alone on this album, we shall have to wait to hear how his piano sounds when the pianist is freely improvising with players of other instruments. For now, Lysne is to be congratulated on the instrument he has created and the music it produces. More, please.