By Klaus P Richter
The program of pianist Víkingur Ólafsson from Reykjavik promised something of the lightness of being: Mozart, Haydn, Galuppi, Cimarosa, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. But it turned out to be an ingeniously composed panorama of light and shadow. Even the F minor of Baldassare Galuppi’s Andante, listened to sensitively, intoned something enigmatic, as does the juxtaposition of Mozart’s Rondo in D major and Bach’s Rondo in D minor. Even more eloquently, then, the confrontation of Mozart’s dramatic but unfinished D minor Fantasy K. 397, which Ólafsson broke off just where it became a fragment, with his cheerful Rondo in D major, K. 485.
But Haydn also surprised with his B minor Sonata. Because Ólafsson gave her brilliant final movement a highly dramatic performance. This clever dramaturgical combinatorics finally found its climax in the meeting of Mozart’s “Facile” sonata and his C minor sonata, KV 457. However, again moderated by dramaturgy. For Ólafsson prepared the encounter over the deeply sad G minor Adagio from Mozart’s String Quintets KV 516, arranged by himself, and a C minor Larghetto by Galuppi. Then he immersed himself in the changing ideas and unexpected developments with an unprecedented sense of sound – and the C minor, because there are only two minor sonatas in Mozart’s entire piano oeuvre.
The lightness of its light C major sister, which is by no means so “facile”, blossomed with lucid splendor only in the last movement, after a wonderfully internalized Adagio, while the first Allegro came along rather lightly. Ólafsson ended the evening in the Prinzregententheater in the shadowy light: Mozart’s Adagio in B minor and Liszt’s arrangement of “Ave verum corpus”. With the sonorous profundity of his Bach chorale from the encores, however, he finally confirmed his rank as an extraordinary artist.