Víkingur Ólafsson played Bach’s Goldberg Variations. My favourite, by far, of the piano recital series. Wonderful experience.

Unlike the grumpy Russians, Ólafsson was personable and fun. Smiled, talked to the audience. Patted the piano to thank it when he was applauded at the end.

These things always end with extra numbers. They can barely even be called extras, these days – they almost always happen. But it was Ólafsson’s very definite opinion that the Goldberg variations were a whole, with a built-in encore in the shape of the aria being repeated at the end, and “you can’t just play a Nocturne by Chopin after it”.


Ballet evening at the Royal Opera.

Lukáš Timulak, Totality in Parts. Had all the right pieces but left me cold. During the intermission I was doubting myself, trying to figure out whether I just wasn’t in the right mindset for modern dance today, or maybe I was too tired from work to appreciate it properly.

It was just… boring. There is the “individual vs. group” angle, dancers moving as a group and then breaking out of it, but there really isn’t anything new about that. And I didn’t like the “language” it uses – and it’s definitely not just this work, it seems to be a certain style of dance that some choreographers prefer – that is all slouchy and dragging and “drawly”. I think of it as the “bad posture” school. The body seems to hang and be dragged along, rather than moving with energy. Pelvis forward, sternum back; leading with the elbow and letting the arm hang; toes turned inwards; shoulders rounded. A similar style is present in fashion photography as well, with a kind of world-weary, blasé, slouchy look.

The only thing I will really remember from Totality in Parts is the decoration on the far wall, with 512 lights arranged in a spiralling circle, pulsating and fading.

Then came Emma Portner’s “Bathtub ballet”, and all my doubts left me. Nothing wrong with my head; I just needed a better show to look at. Twenty-five bathtubs lined up on the stage, and seven dancers doing everything possible with them. It sounds gimmicky, and it almost could have been – “look, here’s yet another thing I can do with a bathtub!” – but somehow it wasn’t. There was an energy and a curiosity here that was just totally engaging.

And there is SO MUCH a bathtub can be used for. You can be in it alone, or together with someone. Bring water, or soap lather, or a duck. Lie, sit, stand, balance on the edge, arch across it. Hide in it, and reduce your body to a pair of legs, just a graphical combination of two articulated lines, really, paring off everything else. Stand it on end. Remove its bottom so you can pour yourself through it.

(c) Nils Emil Nylander

Aftonbladet’s review finds Portner’s piece meaningless and banal, an agglomeration of loose ideas, a technical exploration without meaning. Whereas Timulak’s piece is existential.

Expressen likewise appreciates the existential message of Totality in Parts, its expression of the loneliness of each individual dancer, a reminder that we are small atoms in a wide universe. Whereas the 45 minutes of Bathtub Ballet is too long for a single idea.

Dagens Nyheter likewise uses words such as “weighty”, “mystical” and “powerful” to describe Totality in Parts, but finds the bathtub idea too artificial, sees it as an unnecessary obstacle to movement rather than an interesting exploration.

What can I say. I disagree with them all. I’m not looking for a deeper message in every single ballet; they don’t all need to tell a story or impart commentary on the human condition and our existence. I just want the performance to be interesting. Bathtub Ballet does interesting things with the scene as a whole, and the enclosed space within each tub, and parts of the human body.


Went to a concert with Sara Parkman together with Hampus Norén and Hägersten A Cappella, at Uppbenbarelsekyrkan (Church of Revelation) in Hägersten. Beautiful church, beautiful music, a wonderful experience.

The concert was a mixture of old classical music (ranging from Hildegard Von Bingen to Gregorio Allegri), modern classical music (Arvo Pärt), Swedish folk tunes and herding calls, new music written by Sara Parkman, and combinations of the above.

The concert ended with a sing-along version of one of Sara Parkman’s songs, with a text by Erik Gustaf Geijer, another meeting of old and new. I can generally manage to follow along in an average sing-along tune, especially when I have the score AND I am given multiple chances – this one had two short verses and we sang it three times – but this melody was way above my skill level. But the experience was moving nevertheless.

Powerful and emotional and beautiful. Sara Parkman’s passion and presence made it a truly memorable experience.


The piano recital series continues. Piotr Anderszewski, playing Bach, Szymanowski, Bartók and more Bach.


Piano concert at the Stockholm Concert Hall, with Arkadij Volodos playing Aleksandr Skrjabin and Franz Schubert.

The concert leaflet describes Skrjabin as innovative and boundary-breaking. To me it just sounded dissonant and chaotic. I read that the brain releases dopamine both when it hears things in music that it recognizes or predicts, and when it is surprised. With Skrjabin, I felt there was nothing predictable at all so there was nothing to hang on to. No melody line to follow, no recognizably recurring phrases. It was like… stuff just happening, all the time. Music that’s a hundred years old, and it’s still too modern for me.

Schubert is always Schubert, though!

Volodos also played several extra pieces after the official programme, and the third of them was such a glorious piece of music that I didn’t even hang around to see if there might be more. There was just no way he could top that. Konserthuset kindly publishes updates to the concert programme after the fact, so I now know it was his own arrangement of La Malagueña, a flamenco piece originally written for the guitar I’d guess. You can see a somewhat blurry video of it here. There’s just… fingers absolutely everywhere, and I can’t see how could possibly hit all those notes with any kind of control, but clearly he does. Absolutely magnificent.


Speaking of Schubert, the last concert in the chamber music series that Eric and I go to together also started with Schubert. An octet by Schubert, and followed by another octet by Jörg Widmann, who wrote it as a tribute to Schubert’s octet. And my opinion here was the same – liked the Schubert, but Widmann’s octet was too un-melodious for my taste.


Ingrid’s school had a concert and an art exhibition for parents, with performances and artwork by the students.

Art is Ingrid’s favourite class. She chose this school because they offered art as an elective, and she’s been lucky to get a wonderfully inspiring teacher. The school has an art programme – like Ingrid’s class is focusing on economics and law, you can have art as your focus – so they’ve got more resources than maybe some other schools might.

The two works that the “non-art-focus art class” has done this term are a monochrome study of light and shadow with a crumpled paper bag as a subject, and an abstract print using some fancy type of printer that I’ve forgotten the name of. Numbered copies! This was Ingrid’s take on the abstract print.

I have tickets this season for a second concert series, for solo piano, in addition to the chamber music series for me and Eric. It kicked off today with Grigori Sokolov playing Bach and Mozart. I don’t keep up with news in the world of classical music, or who’s who, so I didn’t even know what a big name he was until I turned up and saw the hall fully sold out and read the programme leaflet.

I enjoyed both the Bach pieces (four piano duets, and a partita) and the Mozart ones (a sonata and an adagio). The duets were especially enjoyable, with the melody wandering back and forth and duplicating between the two hands.

Grigori Sokolov himself gave the impression of being there for the music only, and like he’d have been happier if the audience wasn’t there. Walked onto the stage, gave a perfunctory bow, and started playing. No smiles, barely looking at the audience afterwards. Total and utter focus on the music, which he played by heart without any sheet music.

The audience was in raptures and couldn’t get enough. They applauded until they got two extra pieces out of Sokolov, and still wouldn’t stop. After a while it became a performance in and of itself. If they paid any attention at all to Sokolov’s body language and behaviour, they can’t have imagined that he enjoyed their clapping, so it wasn’t for his sake, but more of a showing off to the others. “Look at me, look at how much I enjoyed this.” I found it rather grating and walked out before it stopped.


We bought season tickets for another concert series of chamber music at Konserthuset. Best part: as repeat customers, we got the option to keep the same seats, which are excellent. Front row, just left of center, gives us the best view and best sound.

Last year’s series was very much a mixed bag. Some I found boring; some were delightful. Today’s piano trio by Elfrida Andrée and piano quartet by Gabriel Fauré were both in the “too many notes” category for my taste.

Vårsalongen, “The Spring Salon”, is an annual art event where anyone in Sweden can send in their works to be considered for inclusion. The result is always eclectic and varied. The works range from paintings, drawings and sculpture to video installations, and more. This year all the works can be seen online.

I was happy to see quite a few pieces of textile art, even though I didn’t particularly like any one of them. Another memorable works this year was Vintern 2021/22 by Mårten the dog, which consisted of all the gloves and mittens that the artist had carried home from his walks during one season.

Ingrid is a budding artist and it wasn’t hard to convince her to come with us, and Eric is always up for art exhibitions. Adrian was perhaps a bit less enthusiastic, but I was pretty sure even he would enjoy it. The exhibition is so democratic and relatable – there’s even a “Young Spring Salon” section for sixteen to eighteen-year-olds – that there’s always something for everyone.

Predictably, Adrian enjoyed the sculptures the most. When given a choice, he always prefers to work three-dimensionally, whether with paper or clay or Legos.

Liljevalchs was recently expanded and now has several new galleries which I hadn’t visited before. The upstairs ones had amazing ceilings.

Those galleries currently exhibited works by Jockum Nordström, whose graphical works I didn’t find particularly interesting. But his mobile sculptures were nice: agglomerations of objects and pieces of wood, with a weight attached to a rotating arm of metal wire, and something noise-making for that weight to hit on each pass around the circle: a zither, or a broken violin, or a bicycle bell.

Afterwards we had lunch at Liljevalchs’ new vegetarian restaurant. The food wasn’t bad but they were badly understaffed so we waited a long time for our food, only to find out that they had lost half of our order, so half of us had to re-order and wait again.

Ekman’s Cacti.

Intense, fun, captivating, irreverent. Made fun of itself, and of ballet critique, through a voice track that at times described what was going on and at times asked, in an anguished voice, “What does it mean?” Never a dull moment.

Memorable scene: a man, with his upper body bare, standing and posing in harsh side light. As the light switched from a source on the left to one on the right, everything changed, even though nothing did.

Hjálmarsdóttir’s Riptide.

Never really connected to this one. Already two weeks later I’ve mostly forgotten what it was like.

Naharin’s Minus 16. Same experience as last time: the initial Echad mi yodeah chair dance was powerful and unique (although a bit less so this time around because I knew what was happening) but the rest felt kind of pointless. Yes, the audience members they invited onto the scene had fun dancing, but it wasn’t interesting for me to watch other people dance with no particular choreography.