Sicklist: Andsnes is out of Abbado memorial

John Borstlap says:

It is worthwhile to look at the marketing picture from the viewpoint of cultural anthropology. Dark-wooden pannelling, parquet floor, cosy burning hearth under a vaguely-classical painting right in the centre of the wall, the artist dreamily staring at a far-away horizon of grand ideals and dressed in a serious, dark suit but with a touch of modernity: no tie. The décor also has a modern touch: it does not look old but newly made as if of plastic. The grand piano is open, ready for noble communication. The message clearly is: classical music is for and by rich, conservative people who don’t feel embarrassed at all by recreating, with artificial means, a cultural situation lightyears removed from the people who actually wrote it, and who never intened it to be suffocated by artifice.