New Beethoven review!

Latest review from Borås with the 4th concerto:

A magical evening

It was a fantastic event when Borås was visited by the piano virtuoso Niklas Sivelöv, who performs worldwide.

The evening’s concerto – Beethoven’s Fourth – began with a solitary piano, careful, searching… The orchestra responded in due time with the same friendly, restrained timbre, but gained in strength.

It was a magnificent introduction provided by the conductor Joachim Gustafsson and the soloist Niklas Sivelöv. The latter is an internationally renowned pianist, as well as being a composer and professor at the Royal Danish Academy of Music.

This concerto is considered one of the central works in the history of piano concertos, admired for its richness of variety and nuance. It has an additional prominent feature that cannot be ignored, namely the ambition to establish an ongoing dialogue between the solo piano and the orchestra. This quality was clearly revealed in all the participants’ handling of the work.

In the calmer parts, the conversation between Sivelöv and the orchestra created some incredibly beautiful music. The soft parts, however, do not last long. Suddenly, restraint is replaced by the furious pace of Sivelöv’s formidable runs across the keyboard.

The remaining two movements are diametric opposites of each other. The second movement is a minor-key landscape that Sivelöv convincingly conveyed. The third movement turns from melancholy into a faster, joyous tempo, with fireworks of piano runs, variations, nuances…

Niklas Sivelöv’s concert gave an unequivocal message not only about his virtuoso talent but also his ability to be sensitive to new interpretations. Not unexpectedly, this generous musician offered the kind of encore that is something of a specialty for him, namely free improvisations on the piano.

BT Bo W Jonsson