Review: Ólafsson's Ridiculous "From Afar"--You Can't Get Far Enough

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  • เผยแพร่เมื่อ 18 ธ.ค. 2024

ความคิดเห็น • 83

  • @michaelhughes1504
    @michaelhughes1504 2 ปีที่แล้ว +30

    I guess "From Afar" is a more tantalizing title than "A Bunch of Pieces that I Currently Have in my Hands at the Moment"

  • @matthewbbenton
    @matthewbbenton 2 ปีที่แล้ว +32

    If you’ve ever worked for a large corporation, you know exactly how this went down. During the pitch meeting with the execs, it was all smiles and nods. Then, out in the hallway, somebody whispers, “What a stupid f***ing idea.”

    • @onnoalink6694
      @onnoalink6694 2 ปีที่แล้ว +9

      Exactly, nobody dares to say 'what a load of nonsense', because they are scared to be labeled as old fashioned left overs.

    • @classicalperformances8777
      @classicalperformances8777 ปีที่แล้ว +5

      hm... I always thought it was the other way around. the poor artists are forced into this type of marketing to stand out, encouraged by the labels. I have no idea, never made a recording, so...

  • @bnc9261
    @bnc9261 4 หลายเดือนก่อน +4

    We live in an environment where we can hear a vast breadth of music and opinions, and I appreciate them all, provided we remain civilised; let's do for music what politics and politicians apparently cannot do. I found Dave Hurwitz's comments similarly interesting. But I I happen to love Vikingur's music. Let's continue the dialogue, and learn when we agree or disagree. Room for all informed opinion.We each have the opportunity to listen & digest, and comment if that's appropriate.

  • @davidrowe3356
    @davidrowe3356 2 ปีที่แล้ว +7

    Thank-you for resurrecting the word "twaddle," and using it for exactly this recording (and trend).

  • @geraldmartin7703
    @geraldmartin7703 2 ปีที่แล้ว +10

    "He doesn't look too abnormal".

    • @baileyrob
      @baileyrob 2 ปีที่แล้ว +2

      I laughed out loud at that

  • @williamfredscott6904
    @williamfredscott6904 2 ปีที่แล้ว +17

    You know what goes hand in hand with all this far-ness? Having concerts “curated.”

    • @robertjones447
      @robertjones447 2 ปีที่แล้ว +1

      I'm interested to know how you mean that? Could you please elaborate? I'm not familiar.

    • @paulk8072
      @paulk8072 2 ปีที่แล้ว +2

      Curated is a pretentious word used for essentially saying songs which fit the genre or subject of whatever they are portraying.

    • @robertjones447
      @robertjones447 2 ปีที่แล้ว

      @@paulk8072 Back in the day, RCA Red Seal issued an Arthur Fiedler album of marching music titled "Pops On the March." Would that be called a curated CD nowadays? 😅

  • @davidlemon3859
    @davidlemon3859 2 ปีที่แล้ว +23

    The funniest, most precise take-down of today's rampant narcissism.

  • @vinylisland6386
    @vinylisland6386 2 ปีที่แล้ว +6

    'Ólafsson teamed up with director Magnús Leifsson to shoot the video in a fish processing plant in Iceland, complete with grand piano. They use the fish, an early Christian symbol, to allude to the mysticism and timelessness of Bach’s music - as changeable as water, it has to be understood at a metalevel, given the many different ways in which composition, transcription and performance can be interwoven.' Right. Great. See you back on planet Earth.

  • @bbailey7818
    @bbailey7818 2 ปีที่แล้ว +5

    "And every one will say,
    As you walk your mystic way,
    If this young man expresses himself in terms to deep for me,
    Why, what a singularly deep young man this deep young man must be!"
    ...Sorry, couldn't resist. Gilbert had a perfect knack for hitting the nail on the head.

  • @zdl1965
    @zdl1965 2 ปีที่แล้ว +15

    Deutsche Grammophon and concept albums are warning enough. One thinks of anything by Max Richter or Helene Grimaud's Water, and one gets as close to pretentious dross. Why would anyone want to pay money to hear Nitin Sawhney's electronic manipulations between piano pieces or Grimaud reading out the titles of the works she is playing. Enough is enough!

  • @tom6693
    @tom6693 2 ปีที่แล้ว +5

    Then you're really not going to like DG's "album trailer," the 4:24 minute video that announced the release of this recording. Olafsson wandering in Icelandic wastelands to the accompaniment of wispy Kurtag fragments and portentous voice-overs.

    • @bbailey7818
      @bbailey7818 2 ปีที่แล้ว

      Thanks for the alert. The DG vid is priceless 🤣

    • @davidbo8400
      @davidbo8400 2 ปีที่แล้ว +2

      I watched the trailer thanks to you, and that was fun. Monty Python comedy material essentially. "It's easier to appreciate the silence in Iceland than in most places". Likewise, it's easier to appreciate noise in NY City than smack in the middle of the Sahara Desert, but it's 2022, so it's never a complete waste of time stating the uber-obvious, I suppose. I could imagine John Cleese (as interviewer) asking Olafsson the following: "I'm currently experiencing a severe bout of existential anxiety over the infamous "F sharp dilemma" Chopin referred to in the very last letter he ever wrote but wasn't quite able to finish. Death does that to some people, you know. It has the most awful tendency of incapacitating nearly everyone from completing a task they had set themselves on doing, a most terribly disruptive thing really. Anyway, most scholars nowadays are of the opinion Chopin preferred the sound of F sharp on cheap upright pianos manufactured in North Korea, but, as you know, this directly conflicts with Liszt's personal account, as told to Rachmaninoff after a masterclass, while sipping Earl Lohengrin tea: that he was absolutely sure Chopin preferred the sounds F sharp made on a Pleyel Grand. You now have a deep personal experience of playing, recording and listening to yourself playing the same stuff on both the upright and the grand piano, thus which F sharp sound do you prefer over the other?" to which Pretendur Olafsson replies "Thanks to DG I don't have to choose, and if Chopin was alive today and under contract with DG, he wouldn't have to, either".

  • @sgfnorth
    @sgfnorth 2 ปีที่แล้ว +2

    Tbf Kocsis played Kurtag with great humour and impish spontaneity. But I’ve always regarded VO with suspicion, he did a Mozart concerto at the Proms and it sealed the deal for me. I’m reminded of the story about Churchill asking a fellow MP if she had thought of a name for her imminent baby. She responded thus “if its a boy I will name him George after our king, if it’s a girl I will name it Elizabeth after the king’s wife, but if, as i suspect the baby is all piss and wind I’ll name it after you Winston” ditto VO

  • @theoryjoe1451
    @theoryjoe1451 2 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    I added the word "sniglet" to my vocabulary today.

  • @kirkpatticalma7911
    @kirkpatticalma7911 2 ปีที่แล้ว +8

    Like Orn, I disagree with Dave on this one. Pretentious? Maybe. Navel gazing? Perhaps. He's a young person in this crazy narcissistic time we live in. Let him have his moment. He's a very fine pianist, and the music he plays is mostly very good.

    • @DavesClassicalGuide
      @DavesClassicalGuide  2 ปีที่แล้ว +5

      He can have all the moments he wants. Just let him stop inflicting them on the rest of us, or asking us to pay for them.

    • @kiradarcie
      @kiradarcie ปีที่แล้ว +1

      Talented Icelandic pianist is photographed in his home country - why is that so awful ?🙄

    • @simonjelinek1832
      @simonjelinek1832 8 หลายเดือนก่อน +4

      Dave is a little too salty here for my taste. No one is forcing you to listen to his music, please relax.

  • @paulk8072
    @paulk8072 2 ปีที่แล้ว +2

    This is hilarious and so true, I sent this to my closest friends. It is so good, thanks man!! haha

  • @pauldavidartistclub6723
    @pauldavidartistclub6723 2 ปีที่แล้ว +3

    I guess Ólafsson has developed a bad case of Brad Mehldau-itis.

  • @timstevensshh
    @timstevensshh 2 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    Yes it's Derek Bell's 20th anniversary. Best remembered in Ireland as an early member of the Cheiftans he definately (judging by the cover of that infamously titled album) did not take himself too seriously. Interestingly he was also a protestant and a devout one at that. According to a tribute by Hot Press the are stories about how at the start of his career Derek would place an open copy of Playboy on the music stand while he was rehearsing with a BBC Orchestra.

  • @scagooch
    @scagooch 2 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    I think this will soon appear at my favourite used cd place.

  • @carlcurtis
    @carlcurtis 2 ปีที่แล้ว

    I don't mind saying that I love his first three cds (haven't heard the Mozart), but I'll keep your comments in mind regarding "From Afar." I surely don't need to own everything he's recorded.

  • @ricbob8602
    @ricbob8602 2 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    I thoroughly agree with you David. And ignoring the flawed concept and pretentiousness for a moment, Olafsson's playing is SO self-conscious that all stylistic characteristics of the composer are neutered...Olafsson's Bach release, and the Debussy-Rameau coupling, were well realised, but he's completely lost me after that. (His Mozart album was tasteless in many spots).

  • @grantparsons6205
    @grantparsons6205 2 ปีที่แล้ว +3

    I'll pass thanks! The marketing departments seem also long ago to have assumed control of concert programming. So we now get "programs" with the most ridiculously banal titles: "The Power & the Passion" and suchlike. Or if they can't think of anything, it's "So and so 'Does' Bruckner" or whomever...As for the selection of works! A recent LPO concert featured the Tchaikovsky Romeo & Juliette, followed by a Dutilleux song cycle. After the interval...Dvorak 7. Go figure! Each work done pretty well, the Dutilleux marvellous, but a "program "?

    • @colinwrubleski7627
      @colinwrubleski7627 2 ปีที่แล้ว +1

      Actually, to be honest that LPO program does not sound bad to me at all... ^^

  • @dariocaporuscio8701
    @dariocaporuscio8701 ปีที่แล้ว

    I thought it couldn't get worse and then I heard about the content of CD 2. I can only say I will use it if ever I'll have trouble falling asleep

  • @syrahlover0513
    @syrahlover0513 ปีที่แล้ว

    I might one of the very few, but I’m gonna push back here…
    Yes, the album might be over-marketed or over-conceptualized to some, but what isn’t these days in the classical world? I actually think this works for VO and why not?
    Due to the ad nauseam of repeated recordings and cycles and whatnot in classical music, I think DG and other companies are trying to find ways to keep things fresh, and with new ideas to present music, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
    In terms of the music and the selections on this album, I love it! When I listen to music, especially in the classical world, I’m listening to the quality of the performances and if it speaks to me or not. I don’t let the concept, or the photos in the jacket, or the script in the marketing videos bother me, (which they don’t), I listen for if the playing is great or not, and in this case I think it stands up to his incredible Bach, Debussy/Rameau, and Mozart & Contemporaries albums.
    I don’t think of the musical selections contained here as a “junk box”, but rather a fascinating set of pieces that roll into each other well. And the playing and recording of the playing is beautiful.
    By the way, I wouldn’t be so put off by the photo subjects…the man is from Iceland after all…

    • @DavesClassicalGuide
      @DavesClassicalGuide  ปีที่แล้ว +2

      The only thing that matters here is that you love the selection of music on the album, and I respect that. Everything else you had to say is nonsense!

  • @vinylisland6386
    @vinylisland6386 2 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    I first heard Olafsson, at La Roque D'Antheron in 2017. He played Bach's Ist Partita superbly, but then treated us to Philip Glass' Etudes which, by contrast seemed superficial, empty and pretentious. I wondered then at the lack of an ability to discern that such a juxtaposition would do Glass no favours, not that he deserves any. It seems now that poor Vikingur has succumbed to an even worse fate, buying into the empty crap of his own half-assed DG marketing machine. If anyone really wants to throw up, try looking at the DG publicity videos for Beatrice Rana (a superb pianist) and Jan Lisiecki, also a fine artist. Cliched, dreadful, embarassing. DG videos actually put me off Trifonov, which is, if you think about it, really a remarkable achievement.

  • @HelloEveryonez678
    @HelloEveryonez678 9 หลายเดือนก่อน

    Check the auto-subtitles on 4:44. Hilarious!

  • @reamartin6458
    @reamartin6458 ปีที่แล้ว

    Thank you Dave

  • @im2801ok
    @im2801ok 2 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    What many artists seem to be doing these days is making a recording of a recital they concocted based on some "concept" they devised. From a practical point of view, the product is, as often as not, worthless for those of us who still collect music (as opposed to using a periodically paid streaming service). And that would hold true even if the CD had any special attractions to merit it. To add insult to injury, there comes the little booklet, which nowadays tells us absolutely nothing about the music played. Instead, we get more one-cent-philosophy, or (as in a recent CD of the Beethoven & Stravinsky violin concertos with Vilde Frang) - a dialog between the soloist and the conductor in which they reminisce and muse about the works they perform. And one final thought, pertaining to the "scraps of faint recollections": is classical music nowadays adopting the ways of Homeopathy...?

  • @Mahlerweber
    @Mahlerweber 2 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    Enjoyed review. Digital Yamahas are eons better than the Baldwin upright I practiced on as a teenager and which I still keep as an heirloom. That said. New uprights are great, but freaking expensive....

  • @KevinPare
    @KevinPare 2 ปีที่แล้ว

    Loose change, a popsicle stick and a Playboy centerfold? Was my web cam on?

  • @OuterGalaxyLounge
    @OuterGalaxyLounge 2 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    Let's do itty bits of two dozen different composers ain't in my collecting wheelhouse for sure.

  • @composingpenguin
    @composingpenguin 2 ปีที่แล้ว +2

    The performances are fine if undistinguished, and I could swallow the photos and liner notes, but the whole replaying everything on a slightly different instrument with more clacking is a pretentiousness too far. If it’s your thing, slurp it up, but that is what leads me to seeing this as serious ad absurdum. Like the emperor in Amadeus, I just want to exclaim “but look at it!”

    • @composingpenguin
      @composingpenguin 2 ปีที่แล้ว

      But I guess that’s how it be; “gotta get a gimmick,” as they sing in Gypsy.

  • @davidbo8400
    @davidbo8400 2 ปีที่แล้ว +4

    There you go again with your harshness! Why can't you appreciate a disc meant for the deaf with a booklet painstakingly crafted for the blind every once in a while? Show some compassion, man, really now.

  • @mumps59
    @mumps59 2 ปีที่แล้ว

    Thanks alot. Just went and listened to some Kurtág and now my ears won't stop bleeding. 😐

  • @philscott6085
    @philscott6085 ปีที่แล้ว

    At first I thought you might be exaggerating - but obviously not. I hope DG or Olafsson’s management or marketing company or whoever leaned on him to make this happen. We have had enough eccentric pianists in classical music! I see he is touring next year, playing the Ravel G Major Concerto: a work “afar” from Kurtag.

  • @ewmbr1164
    @ewmbr1164 2 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    Víkingur Ólafsson is undoubtedly a great pianist. Yet, as I have followed him over the past several years, I can't help myself finding him getting more eccentric as time goes on. A wicked question: perhaps he could be persuaded to play live on site to accompany of the next volcanic eruption in Iceland? Oh well... What a pity to watch such talent go to waste.

  • @simonzhao2154
    @simonzhao2154 2 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    What a shame. His Bach album was a personal favourite, sucks that this new disc is a disappointment.

  • @Belcanto401
    @Belcanto401 2 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    Well, perhaps it's good for the category of elevator music.

  • @robertjones447
    @robertjones447 2 ปีที่แล้ว

    The pretentious classical music album began about 30 years ago with CDs of the Kronos Quartet. The godawful album covers, which portrayed the players as though they were alternative rock stars just left a bad taste in my mouth. This marketing ploy to get people to buy recordings was for me the 1990s version of RCA Red Seal's and Polydor's 1970s marketing of classical albums with psychedelic pop art album covers.

  • @markfarrington5183
    @markfarrington5183 2 ปีที่แล้ว

    I thought it was the 1970s rockers who wrote the book on Conceptual Pretentiousness (note the befitting caps).
    My bad.

  • @denbigh51
    @denbigh51 2 ปีที่แล้ว

    Look forward to Jed Distler’s opinion on this

  • @vrixphillips
    @vrixphillips 2 ปีที่แล้ว

    I was introduced to Kurtag's music through that movie Pina, I think. That or some other ballet on video [it might've been The Great Mass? I can't remember...] but it was for (2?) piano 4 hands of Bach transcriptions. That wouldn't've been at all interesting, except for the dancing. And the piano might've been onstage.

  • @2906nico
    @2906nico 2 ปีที่แล้ว +2

    Agree totally.

  • @anthonycook6213
    @anthonycook6213 2 ปีที่แล้ว

    So it includes both a modern and authentic instrument version, the latter played without vibrato.

  • @littlejohnuk
    @littlejohnuk 2 ปีที่แล้ว

    I keep on seeing him all over the place on Spotify.

  • @lowe7471
    @lowe7471 2 ปีที่แล้ว +2

    "like a big drawer of junk"...I laughed out loud here...Dave has a bright future in writing colorful obituaries...

  • @paulk8072
    @paulk8072 2 ปีที่แล้ว

    Actually another artist who enjoys producing music which entails hearing their bowel movements, the plonking of keys, the creaking of wood etc is Ólafur Arnalds. It is just as pretentious, if not more.

  • @philippeyared2050
    @philippeyared2050 2 ปีที่แล้ว

    Like all concepts, this concept is atrocious and this double playlist is ridiculous. But I've liked very much the Mozart and the Bach 1st Trio Sonata (the grand piano recording). I've not listened to the rest. Also note that Presto doesn't make the booklet available for download.

  • @briankavo
    @briankavo 2 ปีที่แล้ว

    Am so sick of classical music labels trying to make the music we love seem more appealing through pointless photographs and video content that says nothing about the music. Smacks of desperation!

  • @PatAcct
    @PatAcct 9 หลายเดือนก่อน

    Right Dave: this is pure scrape, a junk drawer.
    Have you ever read the "Kejserens nye Klæder (The Emperor's New Clothes)" in your childhood, well, I did and I think this is exactly what this is. Not only him, but there are a bunch of them - Klaus Mäkälä (aka the ken doll of a conductor), Wang Yuja, Andris Nelsons, you name them, all the same - empty and senseless - tools of the record industry of our time, who need synesthesic photography to enhance their marketability, I gather.

  • @TenorCantusFirmus
    @TenorCantusFirmus 2 ปีที่แล้ว +4

    This kind of New-Agish rub**sh shouldn't in the very most absolute term belong to the Classical Music world.
    I'd be glad if some of the performers indulging into this kind of things would try to step up their game and write their own Music, that would be interesting. But such a kind of delusional, egocentric "projects"? Just hate them...

  • @robkeeleycomposer
    @robkeeleycomposer 2 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    Some will disagree, but Kurtag is the ultimate manifestation of the Emperor's not-so-new clothes. An extremely entertaining video.

  • @damianthompson703
    @damianthompson703 2 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    And something weird is happening to Olafsson's once astonishing playing. It's becoming self-conscious and - this is really maddening - he won't take his foot off the sustaining peal.

  • @francescofurlan3098
    @francescofurlan3098 2 ปีที่แล้ว

    But...seriously...is someone buying a CLASSICAL MUSIC CD on the base of such junk and not only for its (at least supposed) musical value? I really cannot believe this...

  • @whoisthispianist194
    @whoisthispianist194 10 หลายเดือนก่อน

    I got really bored listening to this. Glad others also felt the same way.

  • @zenonorth1193
    @zenonorth1193 2 ปีที่แล้ว

    I'd take Lang Lang's Goldbergs (which actually ain't too bad) over this any day.

  • @marilynharris4118
    @marilynharris4118 2 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    I love how you don't pull your punches, Dave! Makes me trust your opinions that much more! 😃

  • @dizwell
    @dizwell 2 ปีที่แล้ว +2

    Ah, I see you've been reading my new Oxfordish Dictionary of Musical Terminology.
    Gould: n. A performer trapped in his own narcissistic bubble. Adj: Gouldish.
    Example: "Ólafsson was so up himself, he couldn't help but be Gouldish".
    I've always thought so, anyway.

  • @8BRInteractive
    @8BRInteractive 2 ปีที่แล้ว

    I wonder what you'd make of Keith Emerson's non-rock compositions, such as his Piano Concerto No.1

    • @DavesClassicalGuide
      @DavesClassicalGuide  2 ปีที่แล้ว +7

      I like them.

    • @OuterGalaxyLounge
      @OuterGalaxyLounge 2 ปีที่แล้ว

      @@DavesClassicalGuide Sounds like a video. Pop/Rock/Broadway composers who delved into classical and succeeded or failed.

  • @carlconnor5173
    @carlconnor5173 2 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    That was funny!

  • @paolobigi59
    @paolobigi59 2 ปีที่แล้ว +1

    Horrible and very pretentious CD.

  • @martinrichard237
    @martinrichard237 2 ปีที่แล้ว

    Olafsson, Kathia Buniatishvili, Lola Astanova , Currentzis, David Garret, Nigel Kennedy, all in the same pot ...LOL and many more.....there is a new one each year.....

  • @michaelm5926
    @michaelm5926 2 ปีที่แล้ว

    Out of pure curiosity: What do you think about the "new" listening experience Dolby Atmos? Surround ..or 5.1? Is this an important topic in the CD collecting world or is the stereo concept preferred? Thanks in advance! As always, many thanks to Mr. Hurwitz' entertaining and fun videos!

    • @DavesClassicalGuide
      @DavesClassicalGuide  2 ปีที่แล้ว +4

      I couldn't care less. I don't think it's important or interesting.

    • @michaelm5926
      @michaelm5926 2 ปีที่แล้ว

      @@DavesClassicalGuide Ok, thanks for your opinion!