Past & Future

January 3, 2022

After a semester of running from project to project, I wanted to give a quick summary of the last couple months, and provide a quick look ahead into the new year (quite excited about 2022 at this point, so fingers crossed things will not derail once again!).

The fall of 2021 had almost to many exciting things bundled up together. From the Well - prepared Piano (Gothinburg Philharmonie) and Podiumfestivalen i Haugesund to La Boheme and Tosca (in Elbfilharmonie, Dusseldorf festival and more), Messian’s Quartet to the End of Time with LightsOut (tour in total darkness across Norway) to several solo and chamber music performances of various kinds and a recording of Sindings Violin sonatas with Magnus Boye Hansen for norwegian label LAWO.

The first quarter of 2022 has quite a few exciting things. First among them is a project presenting two concertos for only the left hand piano and orchestra by Ravel and Korngold with the Norwegian Radio Orchestra and conductor Otto Tausk. These concertos were commissioned by the pianist Wittgenstein who lost is right arm during WW1. In Ravel’s case the concerto is commissioned only a few years after the war by a soldier fighting on the other side. No wonder the resulting piece is rather dark - spirited.

Next is the premiere of a brand new triple concerto for violin, double bass and prepared piano by the emminent Håkon Thelin. Fellow players are Magnus Boye Hansen, Nikolai Matthews and Norwegian super group Ensemble Allegria. This is preceded by the recording of a new album by Boyes Cafeorkester, including a few orchestral classics like Strauss Till Eulenspiegel, Ravel La Valse and Prokofiev symphony no. 1.

Sprinkled in between are a couple chamber music projects in Iceland, a few working phases for new projects (still secret), and the long awaited album release of On Palestrina.

All this planned before April, so really hope thing head (fast!) in the right direction.

The state of some things

July 7, 2021

After a year of something earily close to hibernation, the world of live music is

slowly waking up. Heading into a dense semester, here is a quick overview on the status of various things.

First the drama: Mathieu van Bellen and I have just completed a full five days recording our version of Puccinis La Boheme (picture above). We worked hard to maintain both the grittyness and the lightness of the piece, and at this point I am pretty hopefull this can be (officially or not; and only partially kidding) the record- ing of the century. The recording will most likely be published in many forms; both as pure audio (digital and print) and in some visual form including the text from the live performance. The production is a cooperation between Podium Esslingen and Backlash Music, and it looks like the release shedule will be quite an extensive af- fair.

Next on the agenda is another recording; this time with Magnus Boye Hansen and norwegian label LAWO. On the operating table are the violin sonatas of late romantic maximalist Christian Sinding. In these sonatas he displays an almost mili- tant attitude toward weaving spontanious ideas and abstract twists into the score. Very cool and very unexpected.

Following this, Boyes Cafe Orchestra will visit Oranijewoud Festival, while La Boheme can be cought in Elbfilharmonie (Hamburg), Siggen and Dusseldorf Festi- val (amongs others). The Well Prepared Piano can be seen live in Gothingburg Philharmonic in September, followed by the PODIUMfestival in Haugesund and Incantatie IV in Dusseldorf. LightsOut is also waking up once again, this time per- forming Messiaens Quartet The End of Time in various norwegian dark rooms.

Magnus Andersson reviews On Goldberg Variations

February 9, 2021

Last week we got a very thoughtful and positive review of On Goldberg Variations. It was written by renowned critic Magnus Andersson (Klassekampen, Morgenbladet) and posted on his site musikkritikk.no. Reading the review was especially satisfying for Jan Martin and I, as the reviews kept pointing out key concepts and questions in the project we have been pondering throughout the whole process. It would be fun to address those questions and how they appear from the inside sometime. For now, I strongly encourage everyone to check out the full review and his other writings (especially norwegians).

La Boheme in Beethoven Haus Bonn & Tosca in Esslingen

November 10, 2020

On the 18th of October Mathieu van Bellen and I presented our take on Puccinis La Boheme at Beethoven-Haus in Bonn. The concert was a part of the final BeBeethoven festival, and the concert was filmed for streaming (check it out here)

This concert included several new additions and changes to the arrangement. We have kept on improving our parts for each concert, and are at this point more than happy with a score that is weird enough and complex enough to represent an orchestra, two choirs and a whole cast of operatic soloists. It was special to feel the weight of performing this piece in the midsts of a pandemic, and what was always one of the more real and relatable operas now hit even closer to home.

A week earlier we premiered our second opera arrangement at PODIUM Festival in Esslingen. After the light and (in an operatic context) abnormaly-devoid-of-evil; La Boheme, we turned to the dark and shockingly bloody Tosca. This score is quite different from Boheme, and presented some new (but quite welcome) challenges. In addition to a vast amount of different church bells, an organ and a huge canon, the opera also features pure evil in the form of the character Scarpia. While the violin takes on the other two leading parts (Tosca and Cavaradossi), the piano has to tackle Scarpia - and to play evil (without the help of making an evil face) is not an easy task. However, it is an extremely satisfying one - and in some weird ways it feels almost therapeutic.

New Album: On Goldberg Variations

September 11, 2020

My new album «On Goldberg Variations» was released today. It is the first time I release music not written by someone else, which is somewhat scary and amazingly exciting. Written and performed together with jazz percussionist Jan Martin Gismervik, it has had a particularly long conception, with roots way back in 2015. With Jan Martins background being improvised music/contemporary jazz and mine being very classical, it was important for us to find a common starting point. This took some time, and was eventually brought to fruition in 2018 with support from #bebeethoven. It was recorded by Johann Günther in Reykjavik and published on Backlash Music with visual concepts by Ida K. Hatleskog.

New album: Works for Piano & Clarinet with Miguel Perez Inesta

May 31, 2020

Miguel and I released a new album yesterday on Backlash. It features music by Bernstein, Berg and Geppert, and I am more than happy with the end result.

Despite my affection for both Berg and Bernstein, it is the Geppert sonata that has come to define this recording for me. Realizing our take on the piece became an example of a kind of process I particularly enjoy, where it takes real work to understand the composers language and logic. For this process to take place, two things need to happen: First, the music must be complex enough not to be easily readable, with no clear and direct reference to what it should sound like in the end. Second, there needs to be a clear logic behind it all, a universe where all the misunderstandings make sense and find a proper context. It is hard to overstate the satisfaction of discovering, bit by bit, beauty “hidden” in a cloud of misunderstandable music.

In Geppert’s case, the feeling of finding his sound at last, was particularly joyful. His music is so much of what I like, with a highly nuanced sense of harmony, a strictly defined personal aesthetic and an uncompromising and almost conceptual commitment to proper form. But most of all his music is brave. David Geppert wrote music he himself wanted to hear, obviously enjoying every bar to the fullest. The twists and turns of taste and changing musical opinion of the last hundred years seems to bear little weight with him, and he seems less than interested in playing to the “good taste”of his time.

In my view his sonata is easily among the best works written for these instruments. It is a personal, highly original, often breathtakingly beautiful piece in which it is easy to loose oneself again and again.

Ravel concerto in Berliner Philharmonie

April 8, 2020

In January I had the pleasure to perform in the big hall of the Berliner Philharmonie for the first time. Together with the JEB Orchestra and conductor Miguel Pérez Iñesta I played Ravels Piano Concerto in G major, which was another big first for me. It is definitely a special place with lots of inescapable expectations attached to it. Interestingly, after spending the last couple of years primaraly focused on more experimental projects, this felt very much like stepping into a different genre; with all the freedom and lack of self expectation that entails. I had a great time, and will certainly remember this concert as a special one!

La Bohemè

November 22, 2019

Over the past few months, Mathieu van Bellen and I have performed our La Bohemè at various festivals in Germany and the Netherlands. It is a most exciting project to present and we could not have been happier with the response so far. We were especially grateful for this wonderful review in Neue Musikzeitung by Julia Kaiser:

“The Norwegian pianist Mathias Halvorsen (also the curator of the Podium Festival in Haugesund, which is one year older than the Podium Festival Esslingen and shares the same artistic approach) reveals the essence of a risky venture. Halvorsen and Dutch violinist Mathieu van Bellen perform the opera "La Bohème" as a mentally silent film production. The entire score is divided between these two instruments, without missing a single note. Regardless of the singers, who do not exist, the two musicians follow Puccini's detailed playing instructions, at the end they even reach the actual Toscanini tempi. Van Bellen sometimes seems to grow a sixth and seventh finger and Halvorsen two more hands, especially in the second act, when they let the Bohemians rejoice in the hustle and bustle of Montmartre, with its intermixing of children's choir and military band. Off to the right of the musicians, texts and stage directions are projected on a large screen, so that in the minds of the audience Rodolfo's attic room, the streets of Paris, and Mimi's deathbed come to life more vividly than on any opera stage. Pucchini's music, liberated from all its furnishings, reaches right into the unguarded regions of the listener's vulnerable heart, allowing the audience to indulge with unfettered delight in the play between virtuosity and kitsch.”

wiki-piano.net at Radialsystem and ZKM

October 30, 2019

This year I twice got the rich challenge to perform Alexander Schuberts wiki-piano.net. The piece is not actually written by him, but rather by anyone who chooses to sign up and contribute. Performing the piece can involve anything from playing, singing, speaking, (in one case) miming and dancing to, well, really anything the current editors thought of. Anyone can edit the piece at any time, so when performed the pianist chooses a time version and locks the score. This means every version of the piece is quite different. The video from the ZKM performance is available here.