Album cover art for Philip Glass: Piano Works Víkingur Ólafsson courtesy Deutsche Grammophone.
At first I was suspicious of this debut album by Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson whom I had never heard before. His website is replete with studied portraits of the artist standing alone expressionless in solitary Nordic landscapes, usually in the rain. A recent artistic ‘happening’ shows him playing Scriabin’s Vers la flamme with grand piano on a barge on Lake Vernago, Italy with a helicopter hovering just metres above him. This album’s cover has him looking fashionably androgynous and retro in a crisp white shirt and within a halo of prismatic light. It presents a brave program of music all by American Minimalist Philip Glass with whom the artist has collaborated on various projects. They are both graduates of the The Juilliard School and the album is intended as a homage to the composer who celebrates his 80th birthday on 31 January, 2017.
Víkingur Ólafsson, however, is no mere flash in the pan. He has a formidable technique that serves an appetite for lucid expression and style; he is known for his imaginative and intelligent programming. Signed to Deutsche Grammophone in November 2016, he is already hot property, touring the world as a recitalist and concerto soloist.
The 20 Etudes by Glass had a long gestation. Sixteen of them were completed in 1994 and the final four were added by 2013. As their title suggests, they were intended as studies (the composer says to help him be a better pianist, ‘to explore a variety of tempi, textures, and piano techniques’), but then they expanded into something more substantial. The final, more harmonically adventurous work has a profound sense of tragedy that approaches being Schubertian; it was interesting to read that Schubert is Glass’s favourite composer and that they share a birth date.
The opening track is the beginning of Glassworks for mixed ensemble (1981). It is one of Glass’ purest and most distilled works and is here superbly realised. At seven minutes and forty-five seconds I must say that it manages to say pretty much everything that the rest of the CD explores. Thereafter follows a selection of the Etudes. One of them, and the opening Glassworks, are reworked for piano and string quartet by Christian Badzura, an executive producer for Deutsche Grammophon, with some input from the Icelandic Siggi Quartet. Whether this was intended to provide variation I am not certain, but to hear works repeated with different forces seemed perversely indulgent in this context. At one hour and twenty minutes the recording presents a sameness of listening experience, even after attempts to follow the artist’s instructions to reconsider the works as structural spirals rather than to expect linear, sequential progression. Unless a devotee of Glass, and I’m aware there are many, one might find the restricted palate of colours and technical gestures too limiting for close listening, with the formula of incessant 3 against 2 rhythms, the juxtaposition between two or three simple harmonic cells for each work and occasionally arpeggiated decoration in the treble for variation. I can predict that there will also be a market for this recording as ‘chill out’ background music to be played in expensive apartments.
There is beautiful playing throughout. But I look forward to hearing Víkingur Ólafsson play more interesting (and varied) repertoire.
Rating: 3 1/2 stars out of 5
Philip Glass Piano Works
Víkingur Ólafsson
4796918
Released 27 January, 2017
