Wim Mertens
Jérémiades

It is rich. It is sensual. It is sensitive. It is unmistakable. It is enormous.

It has a masculine and deep voice. Its embrace envelops you. It is capable of giving full satisfaction. It touches the strings of the heart that only it knows. It is persistent. It is eloquent and does not relent. Listen to it for a while and feel yourself being carried away, feel the resistances fall away.

The line between bed and intellect blurs, and you don't know if you are giving in due to persistence or seduction. It is a stormy sea, turbulent. It is an obsession, coming and going. It is a longing, an invincible upward movement that irresistibly pushes you higher. As noble and vibrant as he is, she is equally false and clumsy: the piano and the voice of Wim Mertens. A voice that has never convinced me, and the more I listen to "The fosse" performed by the baritone choir in "Educes me" compared to the version sung by him in "Maximizing the audience," the more I realize that voice does a disservice to that piano. Ah, that piano.

Yet, together they have been the creators of unforgettable moments. If "Jeremiades" does not reach the intensity and ecstasy of the love torments of "After virtue," its zenith, it is not far from it. From "After virtue" to "Educes me," from "A man of no fortune..." to "Strategie de la rupture" and the live "Epic that never was," the production for piano and voice (or, with a bit of luck, for piano solo) is the only one from Mertens worth following. We gladly leave the endless box sets of that ungraceful chamber music, with which he is making his public apprenticeship, to the fanatics and collectors.

But "Jeremiades" is a flight, not a forced march. A poem, not a classroom assignment. Dreamy, intense, always melodic, Mertens' musical offering takes the form of short symphonic outbursts or longer suites that seem to follow the unfolding of a thought that, as it develops, changes slightly—but irreversibly—the mind that hosts it. Or, better yet, the fleeting life of an emotion, one of those small, private ones that everyone feels within. One of those familiar ones—because this music is neither exotic nor difficult. One of those that return, raising the same unanswered questions or pouring balm on the same old wounds. Classic yet contemporary, composed yet throbbing, these compositions provide a precious lesson in inner harmony and hope in beauty that exists, that resists in spite of everything.

Those who still have a heart, let it be pierced.