Piano sensation
Vikingur Olafsson here draws on dual inspirations, a meeting with 96-year-old composer
Gyoergy Kurtag and the memory of an upright piano
Olafsson played in his youth and . The program is made up of short pieces in a consistent nostalgic mood, with those by
Kurtag running as a thread through
Bach,
Schumann,
Mozart,
Brahms,
Bartok, and a pair of contemporary Icelandic composers.
Schumann's
Traeumerei is especially affecting in this context. The concept works, and it showcases
Olafsson's uncanny ability to drop familiar pieces into unexpected new contexts. As for the second aspect of
Olafsson's inspiration here, he takes the startling step of replaying his entire program on an upright piano, and one on which the strings have been covered with felt, at that. The idea, one supposes, is to generate an atmosphere of memories viewed, as the title has it,
from afar. Listeners may register their own reactions to this, and it certainly shows
Olafsson's trademark originality, but a track or two might have conveyed the same things effectively enough; listeners will register this either as another masterstroke from one of today's true stars or as a rather contrived device. It doesn't help that
Deutsche Grammophon mikes
Olafsson too closely on the upright piano section of the program, creating a lot of ambient noise that adds nothing to
Olafsson's argument. However, even detractors will have to concede that the pianist has once again grabbed a lot of people's attention; this double, full-price album showed up on classical best-seller lists in the fall of 2022. ~ James Manheim
