Frenzy Waters – Little Meister’s (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

As I have said, or at least intimated, before, the thing that I love about the musical works made under the name Little Meister’s is that it seems to be the epitome of an artist using their chosen medium to describe the world around them. An artist might apply paint to canvas, a poet captures the world in words, and a dancer uses grace and grandeur to communicate thoughts and feelings. Marius Le Fou expresses his thoughts through deft and delicate piano pieces.

Opting for a Bechstein Grand Piano rather than his prefered Steinway, Marius created this improvised piece in part from reflection on time spent on the Estonian island of Kihnu, a UNESCO World Culture Heritage Site, particularly the waters found there, waters which have shaped those who live on the island.

In his music, he captures the gentle movement of the water, its fluid and changeable nature, sometimes assigning its moods a note or chord, at other times finding the echo of that note as it fades away to be enough, yet constantly adding, changing, moving like the element it describes.

Sometimes the music babbles and plays; at other times, it seems silent and meandering, seductive and powerful. And always you get a sense of movement and change, an idea that this primal force is the master, not the people who live and work around it. It is to be treasured but perhaps not trusted, always revered and respected.

And, as always, he conveys all of this mood, emotion, fluidity, and force through the most straightforward and deftly chosen notes. The flow of music may be constant, but the notes that make it up, the component parts, are as fleeting as the water droplets that make up the bodies of water he describes.

A piece of music is the sum of its tumbling notes and cascading chords, just as water, a river, a shore, or a lake, is made up of innumerable drops of water, all moving under the will of the complex laws of nature.

Could a more symbiotic relationship exist between a subject matter and a chosen artistic mode of expression? I think not.