Now the very existence of Finland is, or ought to be, deeply embarrassing to Canadians as, like us, it is a fairly small nation, wedged in beside a large and powerful nation, but at the same time manages to be a musical superpower. The number of world-class orchestras, such as the San Francisco Symphony with Esa-Pekka Salonen (who was also music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic), that have Finnish musical directors is astonishing. And then there is the host of instrumentalists and soloists. And Sibelius! Finland has a population of only 5.5 million people. Where do they get all these musical talents from?
So given that Finland alone ought to give we Canadians cultural conniptions, as it achieves so much more in the world of music than we do with a population one-seventh of Canada's thirty-eight million, what can we make of Iceland? Good grief, with the population about the same as Victoria, Iceland just keeps turning out musical superstars in both the pop and classical fields.
One of the latest is someone they are calling Finland's Glenn Gould: Víkingur Ólafsson. Now that really does add insult to injury. We in Canada don't have anyone in Glenn Gould's class any more. Not just in Victoria--anywhere in Canada. True, we do have one world-class conductor, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, music director of the Metropolitan Opera in New York and conductor in several other places, but name for me three great Canadian composers. Ok, one?
Mr. Ólafsson has seven or so albums released by Deutsche Grammophon. Not only are no Canadian pianists (or players of any other instrument) so blessed, it is pretty hard to think of a young pianist (he is thirty-six) from anywhere that has achieved so much. All right, Igor Levit, age thirty-three, is in this league, but darn few others.
And Ólafsson comes from Iceland where there are only 334,000 people! However do they do it?
Here he is with the Etude No. 5 of Philip Glass:
And a Bach Prelude:
And finally, part of the Rachmaninoff Third Concerto:
10 comments:
Being the all around good guy that I am, I will nominate you Bryan as one of the three great Canadian composers. Or are you Mexican now?? You will have to name the other two.
I think theses small countries springing up in music is something analogous to how the solar eclipse reveals the corona. The ongoing decline of central Europe in music composition that attracts audiences and even in principal positions like conductor or violin and piano soloists has allowed the periphery to become stronger. This is a process that likely began after ww1, as the post 1920 20th C orchestral compositions that still attract audiences are mostly Russian or Scandinavian or Eastern European.
The last 3 BPO conductors have been Italian, English and Russian. The soloists are mostly Russian, Scandinavian, American and Chinese. So while I accept that European VIPs still go to concerts unlike in the Americas, they don't seem to doing much to reinvigorate their diminishing musical influence.
Thanks, Maury, now I need to write a lot more to justify that evaluation!!
Brilliant and revealing metaphor about the corona of territories adjacent to the central European musical powers. I think that Great Britain revealed its musical talent similarly.
BPO? Berlin? Central Europe in the form of the great opera houses in London, Paris, Berlin, Madrid, Vienna, Salzburg and other places, and the great music schools and great orchestras and festivals serve as platforms to showcase all the talent flooding in from the corona. Or did until the plague hit, at least.
Bryan, Jan Lisiecki is a 26 year old pianist from Calgary who has 7 recordings on the DG label. He is active on the European concert circuit when COVID doesn't limit his travels to skiing in the Alberta Rockies.
Wow, that's fantastic David! So glad to hear of it. I'm surprised I have never heard of him.
I believe that years ago I brought Jan Lisiecki up in comments and it was agreed, ahem, that often the child prodigies and their managers and producers and so forth are more hype than substance. He certainly does seem to make a go of the concert halls but he's no Igor Levit. :-)
I'm pretty sure Lisiecki doesn't smoke a bowl or two before his concerts, and he keeps his political nonsense to himself (on Instagram, anyway). :-)
From what I have heard so far, Lisiecki sounds like an accomplished artist.
You are mixing up Finland and Iceland here... Víkingur Ólafsson comes from Iceland.
Who is the "you" you are referring to? I said he comes from Iceland. I just brought in Finland as an example of another northern country with a small population but a large number of fine musicians.
As a non-Canadian, I would just like to speak up for Louis Lortie, Marc-Andre Hamelin and absolutely wonderful Angela Hewitt.
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