Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Garrick Olsen: Duo Recital

In keeping with the food metaphors that have pervaded the descriptions of PianoArts contestants, Garrick Olsen's rendition of Chopin's Etude No. 1 in C Major to begin his program was very appetizer-esque. Chopin just took one idea in the etude and played around with it in a dozen different ways, but the etude was over almost before it began. Violinist Tim Klabunde then stepped onto the stage, and he and Olsen launched into Beethoven's Sonata for Violin and Piano in C Minor.

I don't know how many hours Klabunde and Olsen spent rehearsing the Beethoven, but it must have been a rather considerable number. Their timing was darn near perfect. The piece required the piano semifinalist and the MSO violinist to play the same material in perfect unison, and throughout the piece I didn't hear any slip-ups in that area. Not bad for a collaboration that had (presumably) never met before this week. Olsen and Klabunde would take the audience right up to the edge of a climactic moment and back away, run up to the edge and back away, before finally exploding into the required thunderous sound. It felt to me like these guys really "got" each other on-stage, and I enjoyed watching them work together.

After the Beethoven, we arrived at Schumann's Concerto in A Minor and, once again, the love story of Robert and Clara Schumann. Since this was by now my third interpretation of the piece, I was curious to see how Olsen's take differed from those of the other semifinalists. Olsen told the story of how Robert and Clara met when Robert was studying with his teacher, and how they married in 1840 against his teacher's strong disapproval. Olsen had a neat little theory for one of the piece's main themes: the theme goes C B A A, and in German, B = H (news to me). The theme then goes C H A A, which is an anagram for a pet name that Robert used for Clara. The piece incorporates times of marital and couple-y bliss as well as heated arguments.
In keeping with this interpretation, Olsen interpreted most of the piece's opening as very light and gentle. He seemed very attuned to what his "orchestra" was doing at any given time, glancing over to check on Wilanna Kalkhof quite often. As the piece escalated into the argumentative sections, for some reason it reminded me of nothing so much as a pair of World War II-era Enigma encoding devices. Both of them were just hunched over their keyboards and pecking away at the themes. I quite enjoyed it.

Also, extra bonus: since Garrick's last name is Olsen and he is a pianist, I couldn't resist putting up one of the greatest orchestra comedy scenes ever filmed. This comes from the Danish comedy group Olsen Banden and is absolutely hilarious (don't worry, there are only a few spoken words in the clip, and you can probably guess the meanings). Enjoy.


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