The maestro of Minimalist piano music has done it again, with an album of gentle melodies and soothing sounds from Yann
Tiersen (b.1970) a composer best known outside his native France for the soundtrack to the movie Amélie (2001): the soundtrack sold over 200,000 copies in his homeland, and became Platinum in the US and Germany.
 
Tiersen’s music helped to make the movie a hit, capturing its bittersweet mix of humour and sadness, and many of the best‐known pieces from the soundtrack are included on this new album, such as the Satie‐tinged ‘Waltz of Amélie’, but there is much more recent music here which Tiersen wrote in the wake of the film’s success, including extracts from his soundtracks to Goodbye Lenin (2003) and Tabarly (2008), which tells the tragic story of the French sailor Eric Tabarly, who won the Single‐Handed Transatlantic Yacht Race twice before drowning in the Irish Sea. Tiersen’s music is often melancholy and reflective, but there are many lighter and more uptempo numbers on this wideranging survey of his output, which is sure to share the popular success of Jeroen van Veen’s many other albums for Brilliant Classics such as his Minimalist Piano Collections (BC8551 and BC9171) and compendiums of Ludovico Einaudi (BC94910 and BC9452), Simeon ten Holt (BC9434 and BC9453) and Jacob ter Veldhuis (BC94873).
‘The music needs to speak for itself, and that it does, in this consistently enjoyable collection, I have no reservations in
recommending to anyone who enjoys minimalism’ (Fanfare).

French composer Yann Tiersen (born 1970) is one of the most popular and successful film music writers of today. His soulful and melancholic music finds its traces in folk music, French chansons, musette waltzes, street music, but also in the minimalism of Satie, Glass and Nyman.
His international breakthrough came with the music for the French blockbuster “Amélie”. Later followed “Goodbye Lenin” and others.
Dutch pianist, pioneer and champion of Minimalism Jeroen van Veen recorded Tiersen’s most popular melodies, playing the piano in his inimitable way: focussed, serene and hypnotising.
A worthy successor of Van Veen’s successful recordings for Brilliant Classics of piano music by Glass, Pärt, Yiruma and many others.
 
Pour Amélie
A1 Comptine d'un autre été: l'après midi    
A2 Comptine d'été No. 2    
A3 Comptine d'été No. 3    
A4 Le vieux en veut encore    
A5 Tourjars la    
A6 Comptine d'été No. 1    
A7 La piece vide    
A8 Sur le fil    

B1 La dispute    
B2 Les jours heureux    
B3 La chute    
B4 L'absente    
B5 Le retour    
B6 La valse d'Amélie    

Goodbye Lenin
A1 Le Moulin    
A2 Le matin    
2A3 La plage    
2A4 Les retrouvailles    
2A5 La jetee    
2A6 Tabarly    
2A7 8 mmm    
2A8 Point Zero    

2B1 Summer78    
2B2 Coma    
2B3 Childhood (1)    
2B4 Mother    
2B5 Watching Lara    
2B6 First Rendez-Vous    
2B7 I saw Daddy today    
2B8 Mother Will Die    
2B9 Father is Late