Vanessa Wagner

The well-known French classical pianist interprets works by composers from ambient, minimal music and the electronic scene such as Suzanne Ciani, Harold Budd, David Lang or Phillip Glass. In France or even Europe, Vanessa Wagner is practically the only "classical" pianist who tackles this contemporary and timeless repertoire.

Pianist Vanessa Wagner performs music ranging from Mozart to collaborations with contemporary experimentalists. She is also an animal rights activist who has run for political office in France.

Les Heures Immobiles, a title inspired by the aphorisms of Henri Michaux, is the new 6-track album from pianist Vanessa Wagner, recorded during an intimate session in December 2022 at the TAP in Poitiers. This mini album brings together compositions by artists Vanessa has not yet explored like Kate Moore and Laurel Halo, and composers she is familiar with such as Philip Glass, Bryce Dessner, and Meredith Monk. It completes the already abundant exploration of a repertoire that Vanessa Wagner has been working on since her albums Inland (2019), Study of the Invisible (2021), and Mirrored (end of 2022).

French pianist Vanessa Wagner collects solo piano studies of graceful minimalism and rare finesse for new album Mirrored.
Quickly following March 2022’s Study of the Invisible album, Vanessa Wagner returns with a new collection of work that paints in many colours. The application of shadow in Mirrored evokes haunting poignancy; the care and delicateness of its negative space leaves room for undulating
melodic motifs to ebb and flow; its bold splashes of luminescence are striking and rich.

French pianist Vanessa Wagner collects solo piano studies of graceful minimalism and rare finesse for new album Mirrored.

„Pavane pour une infante défunte“, an early work, takes us into the world of dance that perfumes the musical world of Ravel. „Gaspard de la nuit“ in the French Romantic tradition, is a triptych inspired by three of Aloysius Bertrand's prose-ballads: Ondine, the water nymph; Le Gibet (Gallows), paints a gruesome picture of „a bell tolling from the walls of a city, beneath the skyline, and the body of a hanged man, reddened by the setting sun“; Scarbo, depicts the night-time mischief of a mocking dwarf. We return to the dance with the bold‚ “Valses nobles et sentimentales“, a series of waltzes written in 1911. Finally, „Ma Mère l'Oye“ (Mother Goose), shows Ravel's affection for his childhood days. Vanessa Wagner brings out the modernity of these scores, their sudden movements of violence, their moments of ineffable sweetness. She plays with rigour, intensity and a velvet touch.

Her curiosity, her thirst for discovery and her audacity have led her to cultivate eclecticism, to follow paths less travelled and to take us to places where we might not have expected her to go. Deeply committed to the process of creating new music, she has also developed a passion for the minimalist movement and a notable penchant for music stripped down to extreme starkness. From her many immersions in often hypnotic sound worlds, Vanessa Wagner has emerged a different person, freer and more willing to reveal herself. And so it is that today she offers us what is probably her most personal recording, a programme she developed over two long years, constructing an imaginary, fantasised narrative based on miniatures by Grieg, Tchaikovsky, Sibelius and Glinka. The pianist becomes the author and narrator of a story of shadows and light.

Her curiosity, her thirst for discovery and her audacity have led her to cultivate eclecticism, to follow paths less travelled and to take us to places where we might not have expected her to go. Deeply committed to the process of creating new music, she has also developed a passion for the minimalist movement and a notable penchant for music stripped down to extreme starkness. From her many immersions in often hypnotic sound worlds, Vanessa Wagner has emerged a different person, freer and more willing to reveal herself. And so it is that today she offers us what is probably her most personal recording, a programme she developed over two long years, constructing an imaginary, fantasised narrative based on miniatures by Grieg, Tchaikovsky, Sibelius and Glinka. The pianist becomes the author and narrator of a story of shadows and light.

Performing and recording the Harmonies poétiques et religieuses is a real initiatory journey, which runs the gamut from extreme austerity to supreme ecstasy. I played these pieces a fair number of times before I recorded them. It’s music that requires a long period of maturation, because, over and above virtuosity, it demands an inner development on the part of the interpreter, an almost philosophical voyage of introspection.

The neoclassical sphere will persist, and will not – it seems - get rid of its desire for nebulous post-Chopin melancholy. And from her beautiful show with Murcof, the pianist Vanessa Wagner had favored very nostalgic sounds and shades. Unlike her many competitors in the post-Brian Eno universe (in Music for Airports mode), Vanessa Wagner, above all a pianist dedicated to classical and modern repertoires, knows that emotion also goes through nuance.