First time at Bristol Beacon. Second time this year seeing Vikingur Olafsson play. Fourth time seeing him play ever. “You’re an afficiando then?” Asked a man with a badge at a pre-concert drinks event. “More of a fanboy,” I corrected him. “He’s quite dreamy at the keyboard.”
Such seeming gushy-ness is my way of mitigating my inability to grasp the right language and order it in as succinctly as possible to convey why and how Olafsson is not simply a guarantee but a guaranteed must-see every time he’s billed.
Someone else handed me a programme sheet for the concert apologising there weren’t notes to accompany the revised programme. Fanboy as I am, I dismissed the apology as redundant. “If he played a C Major scale and a handful of chords, I’d be happy enough,” and headed into the auditorium.
Olafsson’s revised programme (a consequence of a household that had recently gone down with sickness seeing Olafsson promoted to the role of primary caregiver) was one work, Bach’s Goldberg Variations, delivered largely uninterrupted save for a persistent caller and one or two heavy items that fell to the polished floor with a thud. Nothing distracted from the white heat of Olafsson’s dexterity, nor the electrifying moments of collective silence – unassailable evidence that we were all waiting for and hanging off every note he played. I know of no other performer who can command such attention before a signal note sounds. At times in quieter variations, he curls his back caressing sounds from the instrument in front of him. Not so much a battle of wits, rather a collaboration brimming with love and adoration.
You get a faithful reproduction of the disciplined industry on display in Bristol Beacon in Olafsson’s 2023 Deutsche Grammophon release. But what you miss in the recording is the creeping sense gained in live performance that everyone else around you holding their breath. They marvel witnessing in real time an actual human being summoning 90 minutes of musical argument, increasingly complex, to life right before your eyes.
There were moments when the intensity of his playing made me want to escape. Invention on this scale at this rate at this intensity is going to be overwhelming. This was a long hot evening on a chilly day in Spring, witnessed by a near capacity audience at a venue that, if you’ve not been before, will take your breath away when you see it for the first time. When I left for my hotel, I felt oddly winded, as though I needed time alone to contemplate something. To come into land. That live music can do this is incredible.
