The Vikingur ólafsson and Yuja Wang tour reached Walt Disney Concert Hall this week. The query for the recital of the Superstar pianists was such that the exhausted efficiency on Wednesday led the Philharmonic of Los Angeles, who introduced the live performance, so as to add a second appointment. Not a live performance to lose from any dwelling being that could possibly be crushed, the efficiency of Wednesday night had a patron that got here out of Disney who transported a small canine.
Two -coast groups are typically for the transfer. Pianists typically sit in entrance of the opposite, in order that their eyes can meet, the piano set collectively and the lid on the rear device, really making a double device of about 460 strings. This relationship typically results in two brothers (such because the Labèque sisters) or to the groups of her husband-wife (akin to Dennis Russell Davies and Maki Namekawa).
Little of this, nonetheless, applies to the unlikely mixture ólafsson and Wang. The introspective of the Isola and dynamic Chinese Canadian pianists sat down aspect by the Disney aspect, their piano face reverse instructions, their heads flip to ascertain visible contact solely when they should coordinate a climax. Continuing to kind, ólafsson selected the intense leisure of the previous La Phil college; Wang, probably the most glamorous New York Steinway of the orchestra.
The acoustic outcome has proven an interesting glory in Disney, nonetheless permitting transparency and individuality of each piano and pianists. The full liquid tone of ólafsson, particularly within the decrease registers of the Hamburg keyboard, has offered a wealthy base and Slowy for the sound, whereas Wang’s acute have shone. Small silent items have turn into the magic of the airplane. Great flashy works provided an enormous plan immersion for an error.
Exciting – but in addition curious. The program included a bit little bit of every thing, and the smallest is the items, the higher. To start with, the elegant pianists walked quietly on stage, sat down and flooded immediately within the imaginative house with Luciano Berio’s “Wasserklavier”. The fingers barely exploited the keys in an evocation of the watery floor with the rising calm.
Concerts hardly ever start properly once they start in immobility, however someway the pianists instantly amazed an anxious viewers in silence (no waste candies, no canine that bark). This flowed into the Rhapsodical lyricism of the late Schubert, its unbelievable substantial in F minor. Wang has transmitted a full of life percussive melodic delicacy, whereas ólafsson replied with the Soave lyricism.
John Cage’s transient, Sata “Experiences 1” and Studio much like Tangghi di Conlon Nancarrow n. 6, initially for the participant’s plan, launched John Adams’s “Hallelujah Junction”. Listening to those in Disney had a particular which means for the headquarters. Written for 2 pianists of La Gloria Cheng and Grant Gershon, “Hallelujah Junction” had its first in 1998 on the then New Getty Center and was devoted to Ernest Fleischmann. Without that imperious chief of Phil, who by no means took no for a solution, there would have been no Disney corridor wherein to provide the incomparable aura of the night plan. It was Fleischmann who started the connection on the 4 a long time of Adams with Phil, one thing that the composer acknowledged on the final inexperienced umbrella live performance of the orchestra, dedicating it to Fleischmann in honor of what would have been his hundredth birthday final December.
Ólafsson and Wang have captured a skinny remedy -called cagean extra simply than Nancarrow’s seductive glitter earlier than going to town with “Hallelujah Junction”. Both pianists have a narrative with Adams. He wrote his superb and macting second live performance for piano, “Must the Devil has all the good songs”, for Wang and his third piano live performance, “After the Fall”, for ólafsson, who introduced him in preview with the San Francisco Symphony final month. But for all this, the couple has lowered by way of “Hallelujah Junction”. The readability and nuance of Cheng and Gershon had been lacking, however Wang’s hilarious rhythmic grooves had their very own life.
The magic returned with “hymn to an enormous metropolis of Arvo Pärt within the second half. Presumably written and previewed in New York in 1984, this small soundtrack doesn’t take the Big Apple. No automobile horns for the paranormal Pärt, who has not made its debut within the United States for an additional two years (on the Cabrillo up to date music competition outdoors Santa Cruz) Molle, nonetheless, in Pärt didn’t like what he felt and withdrew the hymn, simply to see him once more years later. Angeles “) for Phil and Disney Acoustic.
Ólafsson and Wang have continued to deliver out the darkest bell -like qualities of the 2 -storey model of the Symphonic Dances of Rachmaninoff. Also so, the darkness of the final essential work of Rachmaninoff was paid by pure piano present. The couple lastly danced from Disney with three encores. A Slavonic dance of Hungarian Dvorák and Brahms had been owl and enjoyable. Brahms’ waltz in A-Flat Major was lovingly beautiful.
But what might we’ve got misplaced with out the flexibility of that fortunate canine to take heed to increased frequencies of the ethereal tones in bell? Even for restricted human ears, they linger for a very long time.
