Hugo Ticciati | Violine | |
Víkingur Ólafsson | Klavier | |
Miyoko Shida | Performance Artist | balance act |
Artist-in-residence Hugo Ticciati and Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson are joined by Japanese performer Miyoko Shida for an evening of gravity-defying magic.
During Pärt’s mesmerising Spiegel im Spiegel, Shida will construct a giant, precariously quivering structure – the renowned ‘Sanddorn Balance’ act.
The evening opens with works expressing ideas of suspension and silence, themes picked up by Ticciati in his improvisation and by Ólafsson in the beguiling piano Etudes of Philip Glass. After Cage’s ‘uncomposed’ 4’ 33”, Ólafsson presents Beethoven’s mighty Sonata No. 32 with Op. 111, whose two movements juxtapose intense contrapuntal event against glacial harmonic stasis. In a series of variations, bar-lines eventually dissolve and all sense of metric time is lost in a shimmer of trills.
‘In [Ólafsson’s] hands the slow motion of the music’s shifting patterns and colours is almost hallucinogenic.’ Financial Times
‘Ólafsson’s interpretations inhabit a unique, distinct and extraordinary world all their own.’ Gramophone
Part of Time Unwrapped 2018 at Kings Place