Last night in Herbst Theatre, San Francisco Performances concluded its Shenson Piano Series with a solo “recital” by Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson. The scare quotes are there to indicate that this was not your usual recital experience. The entire program was taken from the track listing of Ólafsson’s recent album, Mozart & Contemporaries, which is currently available through Amazon.com on both CD and vinyl. All 23 tracks of the album were performed as they had been ordered for recording, and the entire performance was played without any intermission. Furthermore, the program notes, which were written by Ólafsson himself, were taken directly from the booklet that accompanied the recording.
Since I have not listened to the recording, I do not know whether last night’s performance amounted to a “carbon copy.” My guess is that it did not. There was definitely a sense of the “immediate present” in Ólafsson’s explorations of Mozart’s “late period” piano music, presented in a context of four contemporary composers. One of these was Mozart’s First Viennese School “colleague,” Joseph Haydn, along with the predecessor that influenced both of them, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. The other two were Italians from the same period, Baldassare Galuppi and Domenico Cimarosa.
Taken as a whole, the performance of the program was an uneven one. The “keystone” of the program was Mozart’s K. 545 sonata in C major, whose first movement is so familiar that it often elicits groans. Nevertheless, Ólafsson gave this music a fresh account that quickly dispelled any here-we-go-again risk.
On the other hand, the only Bach selection, the D minor Rondo from the last (Wq 61) of the six collections of sonatas, “free” fantasias, and rondos, went by a such a rapid pace that all of the phrasing got lost in a blur of sixteenth notes. (One has to wonder whether Mozart might have shown off his keyboard talents by playing that music at that same breakneck pace.) As a result, the program, taken as a whole, came across a bit like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates: when each selection began, the listener was never sure what (s)he would get!
I would also take issue with the lack of an intermission. It seemed as if Ólafsson wanted his performance to liken the experience of listening to the CD. However, I would suggest that there are any number of features that make the concert experience decidedly different from inserting a CD into a player and pushing the start button. If nothing else, one can always hit the pause button (or eject the CD) before listening to the entire recording. Thus, I have no trouble confessing that fatigue was beginning to set in by the time Ólafsson had progressed to his second Mozart sonata (K. 457 in C minor), meaning that, as far as focus was concerned, the entire recital was far from a level playing field for the attentive listener.
Víkingur Ólafsson taking his bow at the conclusion of his recital (photograph by Michael Strickland, courtesy of the photographer)
Nevertheless, there was no doubting that the prevailing reception at the conclusion of the program was one of wild enthusiasm. Some of this may have involved familiarity with the album, but I suspect that it was more just a matter of having made it all the way through the journey. Still, the enthusiasm was received graciously and, eventually, with an encore, which predated all of the music just performed. Instead, Ólafsson turned to Johann Sebastian Bach, performing the second movement of his BWV 528 organ sonata (often called a trio sonata) in E minor. The contrast was decidedly welcome, but I suspect that many of us were glad that it was time to go home.
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