With sweat dripping across his forehead, Nils Frahm takes a conductor’s bow. Despite the heat of the Foxtel Festival Hub and the cool spring night outside, I’m sure I wasn’t the only one wanting to stand in the dark room and watch him play on repeat. The stage is a clutter of pianos, synthesizers, mysterious looking hardware. There’s enough instruments for an orchestra, but throughout the course of his two-hour show, the Berlin-based Frahm manages to split himself in three, deftly moving between a baby grand piano, an upright piano, and manoeuvring cables.
For the sprawling finale he even used toilet brushes to puck the strings at the back of the piano. The centrepiece of the show, like his albums, is the echoing and building sounds of rapturous piano playing that sees Frahm look transported – one soccer trainer fallen off, staring into the spotlight as he uses both pianos with different hands. But to call Frahm just a pianist is too colourless: he’s classically trained, but the performance takes inspiration from jazz improvisation; electronic music’s seamless precision; techno builds and ambient drone.
Throughout the two hours there is thunderous applause and collective breath-holding from the audience, entranced with the strange sight on stage – a tall blond man’s back as he switches between instruments without pause, drawing out the epic You, or the impossibly fast-paced Hammers, timing each beat with what seems like both complete exactness and joyful spontaneity. After he takes his bow, the crowd leaves in near silence, not wanting to disrupt the magical atmosphere he somehow spun.
BY REBECCA FLORENCE
Loved: Every startling melody.
Hated: Why do tall people always stand at the front?
Drank: Too muchexpensive white wine out of plastic cups.
