It was not the ever-popular mixture of “poetry and music” that was the guest at the packed Dieselstrasse cultural center in Esslingen on this Sunday evening, but rather the Norwegian writer and musician Ketil Bjørnstad, who served up musical and literary delicacies for 90 minutes.
Bjørnstad, who is considered a highly respected writer and musician in his Norwegian homeland, has won several awards in both fields since 1974. He studied classical piano in London, Paris and Oslo.
At the age of 16, he recorded Bela Bartok’s complicated 3rd Piano Concerto with the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra. Since 1973, he has worked across genres with various musicians from the classical, rock and jazz fields. He recorded his first album “Apning” as a quartet with the renowned Scandinavian jazz musicians Jon Eberson (guitar), Arild Andersen (bass) and Jon Christensen (drums).
The writing music poet – In both areas, the Norwegian is a “workhorse”, with almost 50 book publications even surpassing his musical résumé with a good 40 CD recordings.
Novels, essays, poetry collections, his literary work area is diverse and his novel “Vindings Spiel” was on the Spiegel bestseller list for months. His biographies of the painter Edvard Munch and the composer Edvard Grieg also attracted a lot of attention.
The book “Mein Weg zu Mozart”, which was published in 2016, also found a large readership. Musically, he has recorded many albums on the renowned ECM label since 1993.
He has produced extremely noteworthy albums with jazz greats such as Jan Gabarek and Trilok Gurtu, or the cellist Davis Darling. He has been working with the Norwegian label since 2001. The albums he has released there since then are characterized by impressive diversity and subtlety.
On all of them, Bjørnstad experimented discreetly and skillfully with electronic sounds and poetry set to music. In 2002, the pianist released two very different solo albums, which he had already recorded in a single day in 1997: While on “New Life” he revised twelve older compositions of his own, on “The Bach Variations” he presents twenty variations on Johann Sebastian Bach’s Prelude and Fugue.
In 2006, Ketil Bjørnstad released his first album in the classic jazz trio format, “Floating”. He recorded this wonderful trio album with bassist Palle Danielsson and drummer Marilyn Mazur. It was not without reason that it was at the top of the jazz charts for several weeks.
The modest, tall man and the fascination of rivers – There he is on the stage, the tall Norwegian, next to his grand piano, looking somewhat fragile and admitting in his introductory announcement that he doesn’t know exactly what will happen musically tonight.
He is fascinated by moving waters, including the Neckar, and will use this as a mental template for his musical introduction to the solo piano evening. This explains some of the names of his albums, such as “The Sea”, “The River”, or the successful “Floating” recording.
With the words: “I will do my best”, Bjørnstad sits down at the grand piano and begins playing after a few meditative seconds. And it flows immediately, gently slowly at first, then a little faster, then stirring again, only to calm down again a few moments later.
As a listener, you can completely immerse yourself in this musical flow with your eyes closed and really feel it. Everything flows seamlessly into one another, interrupted by supposedly Scandinavian songs or folk melodies.
This magnificent soundscape that Bjørnstad creates here with his keys makes time and space disappear, and after what feels like 30 minutes, this work of art ends just as gently as it began.
My path to Mozart – Bjørnstad explains that he always found Mozart fascinating and that the correspondence between the young “Wolferl” and his father Leopold Mozart influenced him in many of his compositions. Nice to hear on the second “long player” of the evening.
The theme of Mozart’s 20th piano concerto appears again and again in the Norwegian’s playing, it disappears again after a few moments, moments later new sound structures from the Salzburg genius appear again, only to then emerge again from Bjørnstad’s improvisations.
Sometimes a real “storm of keys” rains down on the listeners and is then defused again by the calming sounds of a Mozart theme. Completely lost in the flow, Bjørnstad ends this extraordinary sound experience – as expected – with fragments of the 20th piano concerto, played with the finest blade. It really couldn’t be better.
I was a female cow – Bjørnstad takes on the lyrical-literary part with poems that he wrote during the Corona period and which were probably based on one or two nightmares. But just like with his pieces of music, the beautiful, the positive or love wins out. With a smile, he explains that in one of his dreams he felt like a female cow and that the following piece was created from that.
Those who are sensitive can really feel the freedom of this cow and the happiness on the pasture in the tones of the piano playing. A somewhat easier-to-consume musical fare, located somewhere between jazz, pop, classical and film music. Occasionally his playing drifts into honky-tonk or boogie-woogie style.
He is particularly successful with the variation of Joni Mitchell’s “Centerpiece”, wonderfully diverse sound structures emerge over this theme, simply making you happy. At the end of the set, Bjørnstad picks up the tempo again and shows his inspiring playing in all its facets.
The encore “If only” concludes a wonderful and touching concert evening that probably left a lasting impression on almost every visitor.
