Sophie Agnel: Song (Sophie Agnel)

With Song, Sophie Agnel confirms her place as one of the most stimulating and inventive pianists on the European improvising scheme. While she has long been a formidable partner to the likes of John Butcher, John Edwards and Steve Noble, here she underscores her worth as a soloist.

But that is not quite the entire story. What gives the session its distinctive flavor is the framing device: a taped voice—that of soprano Mauricette Millot singing a 1958 rendition of the traditional French carol "San Jousé m'a dit"—on the first and last of the seven cuts. More on that later, but suffice to say now that the shrewd programming signals another of Agnel's enduring virtues—a refined sense of structure, even in the most unbound settings.

Like many others, she treats the keyboard less as a fixed instrument than as a mutable noise generator—extending far beyond the static preparations prescribed by John Cage into terrain that feels tactile, volatile and alive. Yet what distinguishes her from the pack is not just technique, it is the precision with which she situates individual sounds and her exquisite calibration of contrasts. Just listen and luxuriate in the subtle and not-so-subtle degradations of the piano's signature. Her pieces unfold as tone poems—unconfined in form but rich in gesture and implication.

In further examples of canny organization, Agnel alternates density between numbers. The isolated droplets and distorted reverberations of "Song 2" hover in the domain of restraint, while the percussive, mechanical, relentless hammering of "Song 3" is all tension and torque. Even without recourse to the taped voices, she creates sonic layers, which evoke vivid and elemental metaphors: oceanic swells, distant storms, cicada drones, errant poltergeist tappings. At times these emerge as fragmented pulses, at others they engender an immersive, shimmering haze.

The use of Millot's voice adds an unexpected emotional dimension. On the opener, the carol enters as a spectral presence amid an ambient hiss, rattle and resounding key strokes. By the time it reappears in the final track, it is a much more corporeal entity, one which Agnel initially ignores with tentative strikes, but then incrementally aligns, sounding out the underlying harmonic progression, along with thuds, strums and echoes, all sustained even as the voice fades, until she finishes the cut with a gentle lilting coda of two repeated chords in quiet resolution.

It is a stunning denouement to an invigoratingly plotted album—less a climax than a reconciliation—on a record shaped with rare attentiveness. Song may be minimalist in players, but it is abundant in ideas, and its coherence lies in Agnel's ability to sculpt time and resonance with unwavering focus.