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he superb album that the young Víkingur Ólafsson has recently dedicated to Johann Sebastian Bach encourages us to discover his interpretive skills live. We use the first person plural because there are several of us mobilized. The chamber hall of the Palau de la Música Catalana is completely full, it has become too small, either as a result of his generous and daring reading of the baroque composer -a carelessly timeless version, far from period instruments and fashions- or because of the incentive of attending the first in a series of events focused on the figure of Philip Glass, one of the most important composers of the 20th century, which will culminate on May 21 with his presence and direct involvement in a concert with pieces for piano and choir, also at the Palau.
At the entrance to the hall, before walking downstairs to the stalls, a small debate is organized -if anything, an exchange of opinions between critics and music lovers- spontaneously energized by Joan Oller, regarding that dilemma. Those of us who tend to justify attendance to experience the Icelandic interpreter live -who this month, specifically on the 29th, also makes his debut on a stage as imposing as the Philharmonie in Berlin- immediately, once his performance begins, realize that the Philip Glass we are accustomed to will not be reproduced either, but rather an absolutely personal version, filtered by the pianist's exquisite touch. He himself will confess it, after the interpretation of the calm and transcendental introduction to the material (the piece "Opening", from Glassworks) and the first two programmed Studies.
Microphone in hand, a clairvoyant Víkingur Ólafsson explains how Philip Glass's anthological repetitions are always more than they seem to be. His words, in fact, ratify what was heard minutes before: Glass's pieces offer changes of perspective - "new sounds, new textures" - on the same reality. The spatial reality that music evokes is as real - he continues - as the places we have already been. They open ex novo for each listener through a kind of chromatic reverberation that generates surprise, contrasted affections. And yet, the melodic simplicity, the presence of themes that have been compared to pop - in fact, Glass used one by David Bowie in his Heroes Symphony - is an easy target for critics, with whom the composer had to fight before establishing himself as one of the fundamental references of so-called "minimalism."
Víkingur Ólafsson, who initially recognizes himself as alien to that tradition - being, instead, much closer to classical music, to Bach and Beethoven - expresses with a sparkle in his eyes that he has understood Philip Glass perfectly throughout their collaborations. A surprisingly vital creator, committed daily to the task of composition (5 hours) at almost 82 years old, and very open to the multiple interpretations that could be made of his pieces, in terms of tempi or dynamics. Thus, in the course of Ólafsson's interpretation of the Studies, we find the opposite of a mechanical, predictable, and nuance-free discourse. The pianist resurfaces and submerges the different layers that make up a truly complex and subtle melodic framework, indeed composed of simple lines but inexhaustible in their interactions. When Glass's music comes closest to mechanism, Ólafsson manages to imbue it with a baroque lyricism, a kind of spiritual aura - in the form of meditation, the pianist specifies in one of his interventions - that disarms even the most critical.
The kaleidoscope metaphor is inevitable: colored prisms appear and disappear to reunite in new configurations while still being the same, even as they occupy and free other spaces.Víkingur Ólafsson does not shy away from the possibility of interpreting baroque pieces using a logic akin to his sensibility, nor from celebrating Philip Glass's originality as a baroque composer, whose circularity he fearlessly unravels with a neat phrasing, comparable to that of that Bachian recording. Even the potentially redundant reflux in the application of Glass's music to moving images - we think, for example, of the Oscar-winningThe Hours(2002) - Ólafsson transmutes it into a miraculous proliferation of tonalities, iridescences that are revealed rhythmically and also in happy alliance with silences. The metaphor of the kaleidoscope seems inevitable, in perfectadequatiowith the last name of the American composer: prisms of colors appear and disappear to reunite in new conformations while still being the same, even when they occupy and free other spaces.
Due to the freshness and authenticity evidenced by Víkingur Ólafsson's versions, some critics have been quick to compare him to Glenn Gould. A curious habit, that of linking the Canadian genius to anyone who deviates from the royal road and offers some kind of unclassifiable novelty, even if their respective peculiarities barely resemble each other (let's remember that James Rhodes was also labeled with the paradoxical consideration of being "a new Glenn Gould"). Certainly, in Ólafsson's readings, one appreciates an imponderable freedom, musical passion, and intelligence - also a posture at times closed in on itself, as if wanting to enter the mechanism of the piano, or perhaps become an instrument himself - but we also find substantial differences in relation to Gould. There is no trace of eccentricity or technical defiance, however prodigious the Icelander may also be and however much, like Gould, he shies away from the most classical epithets.
That the great composers of the 20th century are programmed and even agree to participate in concerts speaks to the good health of the music scene, which impacts the youngest. Energy transformations that invigorate.Good news abounds with a new crop of interpreters who not only excel in technique but also possess that plusinherent to the true personality of an artist, to the search for a truth of one's own and yet with great repercussions on others. Something we tend to associate with myths of the past and that is difficult to learn or train. Already in our latitudes, we have referred on other occasions to the conductor Pablo Heras-Casado, to the organist Juan de la Rubia, or to a chamber ensemble such as the Casals Quartet. In the chapter of composers, we can remember Héctor Parra or Joan Magrané. They follow in the wake of a Josep M. Guix, invited by the Palau this season, like Phillip Glass himself. That the greats of the 20th century are programmed and even agree to participate in concerts organized in Barcelona's halls speaks of the good health of the musical scene, which has an impact on the youngest. Transformations of energy that vivify.