Last week we reported much dissatisfaction with the Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson, who reverted from a Beethoven recital on his UK tour to last year’s tried-and-tested Goldberg Variations.
The switch was all the more aggravating since his Goldbergs at the Wigmore Hall came days after the same work was performed there by the dazzling Yunchan Lim. Patrons voiced their frustration in no uncertain terms.
Vikingur has now explained to a Wigmore Hall audience why he made the change. Here’s an account from Boyd Tonkin in theartsdesk:
His last-minute reversion to the familiar Goldbergs – which he played on 88 occasions around the world last season after a supremely successful DG recording – had disappointed a portion of his vast fan-base. Besides, the prodigious newcomer Yunchan Lim had just performed the same work at the same venue.
Afterwards, Ólafsson explained himself; that grumbling criticism had clearly struck a nerve. A complex eye operation had impaired his vision when he hoped to prepare the Beethoven. Likeable as ever, he said that he didn’t want the surgeons to employ “period instruments” on him. Then his family had succumbed to a drastic bout of flu, and he had to care for them. Besides, the 30 variations on an aria Bach supposedly wrote to beguile an insomniac diplomat in Saxony constitute a “mirror”. They present us with a different picture every day we gaze into them….
More here.
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