With Yuja Wang Out, Vikingur Ólafsson Performs a ‘Goldberg Variations’ Full of Life

Mutterings filled Davies Symphony Hall. Some people gasped. Still others, at least 11 that I counted, rose from their seats and left.

And all before a note was played.

Such was the reaction to the stage announcement before Sunday’s concert that Yuja Wang had come down with an affliction, and canceled her appearance with Vikingur Ólafsson of a highly anticipated program for two pianos. The man on stage with the night’s most unenviable job reported that instead, Ólafsson had prepared, on just two hours’ notice, to perform Bach’s complete Goldberg Variations.

Wang has a large, diehard fanbase here in the Bay Area, where an appetite coexists for modern composers like Luciano Berio, John Cage and Conlon Nancarrow, all who had works in the jettisoned program. Stylistically, Bach was a 180-degree turn. And no Wang? In the moment, the disappointment was obvious.

Ólafsson, then, entering quickly thereafter, had the night’s hardest job: turning that disappointment around. At least from my perspective, and against the odds, he did.

Over the course of the 30 variations, Ólafsson upended the reputation of Bach as mathematical. Through tempo, dynamics and a precise command of touch, he made what on paper appears as a musical crossword puzzle into something porous, elastic and alive. At multiple points, he raised his right hand to “conduct” the playing of his left, as if it were a separate organism from the rest of his body.

The Icelandic pianist knows this material well. He released a Grammy-winning recording of the Goldberg Variations on Deutsche Grammophon in 2023, and in the following year toured it across six continents, including a performance at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley. On Sunday, across its 75-minute run time, he used no sheet music.

That familiarity has bred a facility in Ólafsson that was alternately sublime and thrilling to witness. In variation No. 5, his hands performed like electrocuted spiders, jumping over each other with twittering fingers as legs. On challenging variations like No. 14, those fingers competed for real estate on the piano keys with the cutthroat determination of someone trying to rent a place in North Beach.

By about 45 minutes in, my furrowed brow had turned into a ridiculous grin. Can humans really do this?

But this was more than pyrotechnics. These rapid-fire passages could easily be played rote, and flat. If you want to hear a computer play them, go ahead. Then check in on Ólafsson’s renditions and get back to me.

Some additional audience members did leave at periodic times throughout the performance — a half hour in, an hour in, or near the end. The Goldberg Variations are, to be fair, stylistically similar, and mostly in the same key.

Perhaps Ólafsson had those people on his mind when he addressed the audience after his standing ovation, remarking that “one should never apologize for the Goldberg Variations, or Johann Sebastian Bach.”

Ólafsson also explained that Wang had to bow out due to a “crazy infection to her finger,” and that the sudden change in program caused him no small amount of anxiety. He specifically thanked the backstage staff at the San Francisco Symphony for “calming me down.”

Ideally, he calmed the audience, as well, who were expecting something completely different, and who didn’t receive emails regarding the change; this was due to the last-minute timing of the cancellation, according to the symphony. (A symphony representative confirmed that refunds were given to those who requested them.)

The San Francisco date would have been the two star pianists’ final tour date together after a string of acclaimed performances. Wang’s next scheduled dates are next week, with Gustavo Dudamel conducting the New York Philharmonic. Ólafsson, meanwhile, heads to his home country this week for performances in Reykjavik.