The most toured new piano concerto
OrchestrasTop-selling pianist Vikingur Ólafsson will premiere John Adams’s new piano concerto with the San Francisco Symphony on January 16, with repeats on two successive nights.
The concerto is titled After the Fall, and look what comes next.
Performances are scheduled between January and May in Zurich, Hamburg and Vienna, with more to follow in London, Gothenburg and Los Angeles. Not a bad run for unheard new music.
Adams is excellent and is only getting better! Well deserved.
(As opposed to the still stagnating music of Reich)
An up to now unheard concerto, but composed by John Adams, thus we know more or less what is coming around.
…and around and around…
Respectfully, the most toured new piano concerto is Peter Boyer’s “Rhapsody in Red, White & Blue” with 57 orchestras in all 50 states in the US, with a London Symphony recording. The performances to date have been with over 30 orchestras and will continue through 2026. It is wonderful to see John Adams new concerto getting heard in so many places by the young and brilliant pianist, Vikingur. I hope to see him foster the further evolution of new music through his career.
Vikingur “brilliant”?
Hmmm…..
(…as Nathan Lane would say, “You need to get out more.”)
Doktor heal thyself. Start by googling Jeffrey Biegel. Here’s a very small sample:
Considered one of the great pianists of our time, Jeffrey Biegel has created a multi-faceted career as a pianist, recording artist, composer and arranger.
Whether Jeffrey Biegel or Zachary Woolfe or ___________ (fill in your favorite pianist) tells me that Vikingur Olafsson is exceptional, I’ll trust my ears every time over what other people are telling me I’m supposed to be hearing.
Maybe one day VO will be an exceptional pianist. But the version of VO I heard in November 2022 was not even close to it.
I have not heard him yet. My comment reflected his mindset of projects not often taken on.
And a major part of his “multi-faeceted carer…” is flagrant self-promotion, opportunism at every possibility, much more in evidence than whatever pinistic or musical quality!
I don’t know who you are, “Herr Doktor,”. But you are dead wrong
Ms. Berman, I see you’re on the faculty at Juilliard. Which I respect.
Let me ask you a question: Should a “world-class” or “brilliant” pianist be able to play scales and runs evenly? This is a pure technical question. VO was not able to when I heard him live in November 2022. All night long. I was 100% convinced he was compromised in some way – sick, injured, etc. yet not telling us that before he played. He wasn’t – it’s just what his capabilities are/were in November 2022 (maybe he’s fixed that problem by now).
And we both know that technical excellence alone is not enough to make a memorable performance. I just have a feeling that if you heard the audition of a student pianist play behind a curtain what we heard from VO live in November 2022 in Boston, with very inexpressive playing that lacked sonic and emotional dynamics (in music that demanded it) and which was technically substandard, you would likely not even consider taking this person on as a student.
Again, maybe we heard VO on a bad night. But others have reported in other cities on other nights that this is his norm. This is how he plays.
I’m glad you like his playing and hope you get much pleasure from it. But as someone who is committed to your craft, I would hope you wouldn’t be so dismissive of another opinion just because it doesn’t align with your own. You didn’t hear the concert we heard. And for what it’s worth, there were 3 of us who all heard the same thing – and all of us gave it a big thumbs down. Again, maybe VO was having a bad night. But a friend of mine in SF also heard him live (in a different program in 2024) and thought he was way overhyped relative to the substance.
In my opinion, VO is not remotely in the class of other world-class, living pianists such as Argerich, Kissin, Zimerman, Garrick Ohlsson, Hamelin, Beatrice Rana, Murray Perahia (in his prime), etc.
If you think otherwise, then I’m happy for you and hope you enjoy his playing.
And you, Madame, are dead musically.
I refer to the mindset of doing things outside the norm. History often remembers the daring and challenging leaps outside the box to propel music forward. I do not know his playing well, but will check him out. What I do see are projects of challenge and it is the act of pushing music forward outside the parameters of traditional programming that helps this process. I should have rephrased and put the word brilliant into perspective.
Unlike you, Jeffrey, I have heard Vikingur live (in Boston). There have been other discussions about his playing on other threads, so I’m going to be repeating what has been said elsewhere. On the evening I heard him perform his complete Mozart program in Boston, I was convinced he must have been ill or had an injury that he was not telling us about and bravely playing through. Why? Because his playing was pretty terrible. It was the playing of a graduate student – and not a particularly good one. He was generally inexpressive, he couldn’t play scales or runs evenly (!!!), his control of dynamics was unimpressive…really, this wasn’t a close call. Because I was hearing such substandard playing, I was quite confident I was not hearing him as he normally plays.
That is, until I went looking online at reviews of other concerts, and read comment after comment of other musically-informed listeners in other cities who heard exactly the same thing. So I wasn’t alone, and it wasn’t just a “bad night in Boston” as some might say. This is who he is.
I would never buy a ticket to hear VO again. Really, there are so many other wonderful pianists that are worth my time and dollars. VO? Not so much.
There are people out there who likely enjoy his playing for whatever reason – because they don’t know better, because they don’t like pianists who have a wide emotional and dynamic range, etc. I get it. But to think of VO as a world-class pianist? Not even a little bit. Do his records sound better than he does live? I have no doubt – because all kinds of tricks are possible in the studio that are not possible live in concert. Still, even a more technically-proficient version of VO would not interest me. I found his playing kind of dead – cloistered, inexpressive, extremely limited. There was nothing in it that engaged me emotionally. Think the opposite of Martha Argerich, my favorite pianist.
Does VO program well? Sure, I’ll give him that. And it’s fantastic that he’s gotten a following and made a career. But unless he gets a lot better – and quickly – he’s nothing more than an Icelandic David Helfgott. With lots of click-throughs.
You have said the same things about Vikingur three times now. Please, get over yourself.
Mr Biegel – your recording of it is wonderful. Brings me much delight over and over again. Peter Boyer writes fantastic music.
Thank you, truly. But let’s keep the focus on Vikingur, who is the topic of Norman’s post. I have not heard him play, but admire his out of the box thinking.
Adams is good at piano concertos, he knows what audiences want. Here is his Naked Concerto:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3M1z3ITIf4
“Naked Concerto”? Huh?
As orchestra budgets dwindle it’s not unusual to have multiple orchestras jointly commissioning a single work, which is then presented by each partner in the next season or so. So the cited Adams example is becoming more and more common, in fact.
This might actually be a good idea, in the sense that the music is heard more than once. And the composer might even be able to make small adjustments to the score based on the audience reaction, if he feels something hasn’t worked.
Composers who revise their works on the basis of audience reactions, is not a serious composer. He has to revise his music on the basis of his own ideas and experience. If he is good, audience reactions will confirm his ideas. A serious composer does not want to please audiences first and foremost, but wants to share his musical visions with the listeners and hopes they will like them as he liked them. This is something very different from writing what audiences like.
..eerrhhh…. Verdi, Puccini, Rachmaninoff (all revisions..), evidently very bad composers..!
It isn’t a matter of “pleasing the audience”. It is a matter of finding out what has worked in performance (as against on paper) and what hasn’t, and observing how your music is heard may be helpful. After all, surely communication is at the heart of music?
Yes indeed. However, it takes tremendous effort to build consortiums of orchestras. In the end, it is worth it. Bringing new works to the repertoire is challenging but fun.
And yet it still won’t enter the repertoire.
John has a massive following. He also has the single most performed work by a living classical composer, the fanfare, “A Short Ride In a Fast Machine”. The format the second piano concerto is following in concert locations is the same one employed with the first piano concerto, where Yuja and then later Vikingur took it around the world. John was very pleased with Vikingur’s performances of this work and hence he was given the run for the second.
This will in fact be John Adams’s third piano concerto. His first is from 1997 for Emanuel Ax, called Century Rolls. Evidently it is already forgotten.
I’ve forgotten it – and I heard it too.
Closing credits of the film “I am Love” (Tilda Swinton etc.) – amazing.