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A Holiday from Nuance New York
Isaac Stern Auditorium, Carnegie Hall
02/19/2025 - & February 21 (Boston), 23 (Cleveland), 26 (Los Angeles), 28 (Santa Barbara), March 2 (San Francisco), 2025
Luciano Berio: Six Encores: 3. “Wasserklavier”
Franz Schubert: Fantasia in F minor, D. 940
John Cage: Experiences No. 1
Conlon Nancarrow: Etude No. 6 (arr. Thomas Adès)
John Adams: Hallelujah Junction
Arvo Pärt: Hymn to a Great City
Sergei Rachmaninoff: Symphonic Dances, opus 45
Víkingur Olafsson, Yuja Wang (Pianists)
V. Olafsson/Y. Wang (© Ari Magg/Norbert Kniat)
“Classical music is far from boring. It has all the blood, energy, the sinister dark side, rhythm that rock music has, and all the refined, subtle sensuality that one can ask for.”
Yuja Wang
“I like being ahead of the game and not let the industry define me, but rather tell the industry who I am and who I want to become.”
Víkingur Olafsson
So what can anybody rationally say? Two of the foremost pianists in the world, from opposite sides of the earth. Both charismatic in their own way. Both outgoing, technically faultless. A program of rare miniatures and grand romantic pieces.
Plus a professional and personal empathy on their two Steinways. Plus, both pianists, having played world premieres of John Adams, here playing one of his most dynamic works. Plus both Yuja Wang and Víkingur Olafsson, with entirely different reputations becoming a single entity, coalescing together, tossing aside their singular reputations.
Beijing-born Yuja Wang, once a concert fashionista, here wearing a white beach outfit for the first half, a black formal gown for the second. Ms Wang has broken every boundary, from her Rachmaninoff one‑night marathon through conducting and playing the original Gershwin Rhapsody through partnerships with So Percussion through jazz, through 21st Century avant‑garde.
With our illusion that she can sit at the piano looking at the most complex music and play it with perfection the very first time. (That indeed is illusion, but it fits her persona.)
Víkingur Olafsson, from Reykjavik, Iceland, a product of volcanos and hot springs, yet with the laurels of intense scholarship. One feels that he studied each and every measure of the Goldberg Variations before taking it around the world with 90 concerts and (presumably) 90 different results. And poring over the Philip Glass Etudes as much as his Bach.
The three “miniatures” were tiny only in duration Yet within their 2‑6 minute length, filled with what can only be called unexpected gifts. In fact, while new to me, they remained in my mind long after the familiar Schubert and Rachmaninoff.
Granted, Berio had the most wide-ranging styles of any 20th Century composer, but his Wasserklavier, one of six Encores, had a fluidity, a counterpoint so subtle, a mixture for both pianists, that it mesmerized the audience.
Thus, an immediate applause-free segue to the Schubert Fantasie. More on that later.
But John Cage?? This was early Cage, a Cage of engagement, of melodies and of gorgeous mixtures for the two artists playing only on the white keys.
As for those Cage empty spaces, yes, Experiences No. 1, did, unexpected pauses. But as Artur Schnabel once said, “It isn’t the notes, it’s the spaces between the notes which are important.”
Like everybody else, Conlon Nancarrow scares folks more than Cage. No spaces here: he fills his staves with algorithmic equations, fractional modes, and–for a good Arkansas-born Communist–music which no prole would ever understand. His Study No. 6, written originally for orchestra, was arranged for two pianos by Thomas Adès. It was difficult for the players, relatively simple for the audience.
What we had was Víkingur Olafsson playing repeated rhythms, which I originally thought were jazzy, and later realized where vaguely Latin American, none of which deleted the constructions of Ms Wang.
The final “miniature” was Arvo Pärt’s tribute to a New York which I never experienced. Quiet, pulsing, with a single note repeated endlessly. It was hardly “New York, New York”, but had its own secrets.
Onto more time-substantial pieces, though “more substantial” hardly classifies Schubert’s magnificent Fantasie, here arranged from four hands to two pianos. Yet we had a clarity, a sense of propulsion and an understanding.
As for the Symphonic Dances, they are far better known for their splendid orchestration. The premiere, at a Beverly Hills party for two pianos, was given by Horowitz and Rachmaninoff!!! (What a grand party that must have been).
Now we come to John Adams’ Hallelujah Junction. If anything could show the propulsion, the daring, the remarkable synchronicity of these two players, the last movement did it. Bursts of power, interlinear counterpoint, 20 fingers whizzing over 88 keys.
If nothing else, this was a demonstration of two players with both physical boundlessness and faultless understanding.
Doubtless, other scribes may find fault with their partnership. This writer was happy to take a holiday from nuance.
The duo deserved the quartet of encores, these from one piano. Four‑handed Brahms Hungarian Dances and the Schubert Marche Militaire played with Horowitz-style panache and exaggeration.
Were these party pieces? Four-handed fun for players and listeners? So be it. Messrs Wang and Olafsson possessed those so rare accolades of enjoying themselves and the music together.
Along with us spectators listening both with pure pleasure and unalloyed bliss.
Harry Rolnick
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