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Interesting Bach Interpretation
Politiken, 3 July 2010

Niklas Sivelov, Swedish pianist
and professor conquers the music
with his whole body and
personality.
He rocks gently back
and forth, gestures
and quietly sings
with the music.
Sivelov's style is always personal.
There is no doubt that it is
a person of flesh and blood
with will power and energy
sitting by the piano.
Not only in Tivoli's
intense Bach presentation but
certainly also in the even
more successful new
recording of Schumann's
three piano sonatas.

Although one almost sensed
the pain it caused Sivelov to
draw 48 pieces from both books
of the Wohltemperierte Klavier
out in the extreme tension in
both ends of the giant speedometer,
one also sensed at the same time
how much thought Sivelov was
able to transfer into his fingers.
Each of the preludes and fugues
was given its own sustaining idea.
Fugues in a tempo where
the usual structured chase
between three voices were
dissolved to piano thunder.
Melodic preludes as light
romances or jazzy songs,
flowing like improvisations.
Or clear baroque mechanics
drawn out of the regular
pulse with space to hear
all details.
Sivelov did not play as
much pure, motorised baroque
as one expects to hear in a
time where the musicians
more and more try to copy
the style of early music
with offset in the
more limited instruments
which were available
to the composers.
His violent tempos did
give some mistakes but it
did definetely not make t
he small units less interesting.

100 years after Bach's
ground-breaking work
the composers had had
time to purify the sonata
form and time to break
it down again.
Here Robert Schumann
found the medium to fill
a work with fragments
which together, but
without a clear thread,
could commincate some
of the man's rather
violent challenges to
his soul.
Both the carnal love
and the more existential.
This world is clearly a
perfect universe for
Niklas Sivelov's inclination
and ability ot pour his
whole being into the music
on his new realease on
the little ARecords label.

The three piano sonatas
become great raids
on temperaments
forever changing.
Powerful outbursts
with long stretched lines
are succeeded by simple
miniatures to change
into delicate chor or
straightforward
manifestations.
Sivelov is obviously
never afraid of draw t
the knife fully through,
and the consistent thinking
makes the cd a small
master piece amidst
the grand portrayal of feelings.
It would be fitting for Tivoli
to programme the three sonatas
as a follow-up on Bach.

Henrik Friis

Great Scriabin
Fanfare, 1 July 2010

I am becoming increasingly
fond of the Caprice label,
both in its new issues
and historic reissues.
This is one of the former,
an album recorded in 2005
by Swedish pianist Niklas Sivelov.
Except for Vers la flamme,
Feuillet d’album,
the op. 57 Moreceux, and
the Sonata No. 4, most
of this program consists
of earlier works by Scriabin.
Sivelöv’s mission is to
show the connections between
the earlier works and the later ones,
to display, as he puts it in the
liner notes, the way in
which Scriabin interrupted his lyric
moods with emotional outbursts t
hat didn’t quite fit in.
In this, he succeeds handsomely.

Sivelov’s playing is direct, crisp,
and fiery.
He takes no prisoners in his
forthright approach
to the music.
Nevertheless, I must
disagree with some of
his tempos and phrasing.
None of the slow preludes in
the op. 11 set are r
eally slow; lentos are
turned into andantinos,
andantes into moderatos,
andantinos into prestos.
Comparing him not only with
Mikhail Pletnev in his acclaimed
set of the complete op. 11
(Virgin Classics 45247), or even
another abridged recording
of the op. 11 by Mayron Tsong
(Centaur 2946),
I found their slower, legato
approach more congenial
to music that was clearly
inspired by Chopin.
Ruth Laredo, who recorded
what must be considered
one of the definitive sets
of the complete Scriabin sonatas
way back in 1970, points out t
hat as a piano student Scriabin
was criticized for his “ethereal”
playing, and in those years
he slept with a copy of Chopin’s
preludes under his pillow.
Of course, his aesthetic
and musical approach underwent
a tremendous metamorphosis
around the turn of the 20th
century, and his own 1910
performance of the Étude, op. 8/12
(also played on this recital by Sivelov),
recorded as a Welte-Mignon
piano roll, certainly
reveals an approach much
closer to the Swedish pianist
than to Pletnev or Tsong,
but his phrasing is more legato.
My point is that both interpretations
are valid, and that I prefer a little
more backing-off in some of these
early works.

And yet Sivelov certainly
does make Scriabin’s music
on this CD, spanning
almost the full chronology
of his piano output,
sound convincingly of a piece.
It is as far from the ethereal
Scriabin of 1890 as one could
possibly get.
I’ve often wondered where
Scriabin may have gone
musically had he lived
to finish Misterium,
and of course we’ll never know,
but Sivelov’s musical
and philosophical approach
to his music will certainly hold
your attention.
I personally rank this as one
of the great Scriabin issues
of all time, despite my caveats.
Lynn Rene Bayley

A Sonorous Ebb And Flow
Dagens Nyheter, 30 June 2010

Niklas Sivelov:
Schumann: Piano Sonatas
A Records/Danacord

The piano professor
Niklas Sivelov has compared
the music soloist to an
enormous antenna which
with sound waves seeks its receiver.

Maybe you could also
talk about a sonorous
ebb and flow.
At least when we are
talking about his
interpretations of
Robert Schumanns
three piano sonatas
from the 1830's
which deals with
the manic-depressive
musical tendencies of
the 200-years jubilee.
Schumanns romantic
piano music prefers to
follow the logic of poetry
and reflects the composers
alter egos Florestan
(a lively character)
and Eusebius (a dreamer).

Schizofrenic moods
which Sivelov controls
on the limit between
restlessness and reflection.
Especially when the time
signature in the second
sonata builds up to a
lightning speed with
the first movement in
evanescently and thoughtful haste.

Best track: The finale of sonata
no. 3 and no. 1.

Johanna Paulsson

Niklas Sivelov Masters The Poetic Logic
Sydsvenskan, 19 May 2010

Niklas Sivelov has
specialised in Schumann
and hails him
with strong interpretations
of the three sonatas from
the 1830's.
Pure piano romance
closer to Beethoven than
Chopin - and closest
to the composer
himself in the splintered
flow of ideas and melodies
which was Schumann's
sorcerer's brew.
A classic analyst of form
finds not much convincing
regularity in Schumann.
Here it is the poetic logic in
the centre: the playing in
contrasts, the abrupt change
of feelings.
Sivelöv masters this.
The tones cascade forward
or rest in meditating depths.
A fairy tale, a bath in beauty,
new views and pleasure
awaits the alert listener.

Carlhåkan Larsén

Impressive
Helsingør Dagblad, 3 May 2010

Niklas Sivelov impressed the
audience in Sthens Church.
Sunday afternoon we had
the pleasure of listening to
one of our leading
Scandinavian pianists
who has an international career.
Sivelöv played Schumann's
wonderful Sonata no. 2, Op. 22.
He has the temperament and
also the ability to give the
music time and space
and his performance gave
the audience a very
pleasurable experience.
Pieces by Chopin opened
for Sivelov's colourful
interpretation.
The two mazurkas were
fierce and elegant, while
Nocturne no. 16 was given its
own sensitive expression.
Polonaise no. 6 in A flat Major
is for those artists who
have virtuoso fingerings,
feeling, musicality and
understanding for the music's
contents and message.
Sivelov has all these qualities.

He also composes.
We heard a student play
excerpts from his
'Album for the Young' -
fun and exciting.
It was followed by Sivelov p
laying his own improvisations
over songs by his countryman
Carl M. Bellman.
The concert ended with dances
by Ginastera and in Sivelov's
hands the dances were excellent
and a pianistic tour de force.
The audience expressed
their admiration and enthusiasm
with standing ovations.

Niklas started 2010 with a
Bach Marathon at
The legendary Barge Music
in NYC performing 
Das Wohltemperierte Klavier,
The Brandenburg Concertos and
a recital with music of Bach
and Haendel together
with Mark Peskanov, violin.

The NY Times wrote:

"Mr. Sivelov approached Book 1
without an apparent agenda:
unlike Richard Egarr,
whose harpsichord performance
at Weill Recital Hall in 2008
explored relatively recent theories
about what “well-tempered” tuning
meant to Bach, Mr. Sivelov played the
work on the piano, in the
standard modern tuning.

And unlike Daniel Barenboim,
who seemed intent on giving
each piece a distinct, personalized
orchestration when he played
the set at Carnegie Hall in 2007,
Mr. Sivelov offered a unified view
and varied his timbre and
dynamics only subtly.

Mostly, he favored brisk tempos,
bright timbres and a clean
if sometimes weighty sound.
You could question his speediness
at times: in the opening
C major Prelude, he played
the arpeggiated figures so quickly
that the lingering overtones
made them sound almost like
solid chords.
Yet here and in several other
unusually quick readings, he let the
top notes in each arpeggio ring out
clearly to create a graceful, floating
melody.
And particularly in the fugues,
he maintained a remarkable
transparency of texture.

At times — in the outgoing
E major and G major preludes
and fugues, for example —
he leaned into the music
almost like a jazz pianist,
tapping his left foot quickly
to a rhythm from
within Bach’s dense contrapuntal
texture. But though extroversion
was clearly Mr. Sivelov’s preferred mode,
he was sensitive to Bach’s darker
moods as well: his calm, supple
performance of the D sharp minor Fugue
and the organlike sound he brought
to the stormy, chromatic Prelude and
Fugue in A minor were among the
highlights of his performance"

By Alan Kozinn

Great News!!

Niklas is the first pianist ever
from Sweden and Denmark to
be elected for The Hall of Fame,
and his portrait will be hanging in
The Artist Gallery at Steinway
in Hamburg together with pianists
such as Rubinstein, Horowitz,
Gould, Barenboim, Lupu and many
more..!

Niklas is also a,