Patriarchs
A calm and muted piano opens up Ruhe’s Patriarchs; modest, sensible. A couple of minutes later, the melody burns up as it’s wrapped around a heat-leaking drone. It returns a different person. The piano’s life has been influenced by the drone, and it’ll never be the same.
The piano lends itself to a natural elegance. It’s inside the soul of the instrument, and it’s something that can’t be bought or attained. The ambient tone is a muffled one, its clarity slowly masked and covered by a house of falling leaves. Still, bright colours and warm, glowing lights glint through the music. Clearer voices lie in the foreground and complement the deeper tone of the piano. Contemplative and clear, rusty memories rise up behind the mind’s eye, playing again and again like a reel of recorded film left to run through an old projector. These are sacred moments.
The music recalls an old, warm place – a beloved family home, a transient shelter made out of sepia that seeps out of the constrictions of a time long ago. There’s something incredibly final about this tender moment. You realize that you won’t ever have this one moment again. You cherish it. Photographs are framed and have pride of place. Family pets sleep on a comfy blanket. A cosy fire licks tentatively at the notes. The December chill that lingers outside can find no entry. It’s only a couple of feet away, but you wouldn’t know it. Ruhe digs deep in search of a special moment, a kind of musical archaeology in action. You know he’s found it, because there isn’t a weak piece here. Every single composition is an introverted one; the piano leads a lovely, quiet life. It’s shy music.