Le Moulin

Where Tiersen's piano pieces achieve their effect through economy, this one opens up into full-bodied noise — the accordion arrives immediately, bright and slightly reedy, giving the piece its specific national character. There is something almost dizzying about Le Moulin's velocity; it moves with the energy of a crowd in a narrow street, instruments tumbling over each other with joyful insistence. A violin melody weaves above the accordion's rhythm, and together they create a texture that is simultaneously nostalgic and entirely alive. This is not the nostalgia of sadness but of pleasure — the feeling of being very specifically somewhere, some warm particular evening that you know you will remember. The Parisian character is explicit and unapologetic: this is music that belongs to accordion players in Metro corridors, to films shot on wet cobblestone streets at dusk, to the whole mythology of French life as filtered through cinema. The dynamics pulse and surge, the tempo threatening to run away with itself before pulling back just enough to stay coherent. Emotionally it sits in the register of simple, uncomplicated happiness, which is rarer in music than you'd think — most composers distrust pure joy and feel compelled to complicate it. Tiersen doesn't. This is for early evening, for moving through a city you love, for that specific combination of solitude and aliveness that good cities provide.