Porz Goret

Yann Tiersen is best known as the composer of the Amélie soundtrack — a 2001 score that became one of the most streamed classical crossover recordings of the decade. But Tiersen has spent twenty years making records that have very little to do with that nostalgic Parisian aesthetic.

Porz Goret, from EUSA (2016), is a solo piano piece recorded on the island of Ushant off the Brittany coast — spare, melancholic, built from a melody that feels like it was composed by the island itself. The piano sits in a room; you can hear the room.

EUSA demonstrates how far Tiersen has traveled from the Amélie sound — and how much more interesting he is as an artist freed from that association.