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“Kristian Riisager is a pianist who has come to provide us, the listeners, with new and dazzling perspectives on music.” P2 anbefaler klassisk, Claus Berthelsen
Kristian Riisager conveys the music with a strong and vivid expression. As a concert pianist, he has performed at a variety of venues and festivals in Denmark and abroad. Critics describe his piano playing as courageous and convincing. He approaches the music with respect, humility, and technical precision, while also managing to present it with a personal and moving interpretation.
In recent years, Kristian has released two albums that have received great recognition. In 2022, he released his debut album “A Testament to Hope – Piano Works by Beethoven,” and the following year, Kristian and soprano Louise McClelland Jacobsen released an album with songs by the Danish composer Rued Langgaard. Both albums have been noted with excellent reviews by both radio stations and music magazines. For instance, the German magazine Piano News awarded “A Testament to Hope – Piano Work by Beethoven”
with a six-star review, stating: “Kristian Riisager plays Beethoven analytically, crystal-clear, free from sentimentality and yet touching, passionately, and convincingly.”
Kristian’s talent and dedication have been recognized with several awards, including the Léonie Sonning Talent Prize in 2023. Additionally, he is supported by the Augustinus Foundation, which has provided him with a Steinway Grand Piano on loan for his studies.
Kristian Riisager began his musical journey at the Gradus Piano School in Aarhus and continued his studies at the Hochschule für Musik “Hanns Eisler” in Berlin. He then went on to the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen, where he has been studying in the Soloist Class since 2023. From 2022 to 2024, he is a Visiting Artist at the Ingesund Piano Center in Sweden. He has studied under renowned pianists and educators, including Martin Lysholm Jepsen, Eldar Nebolsin, Jens Elvekjær, and Julia Mustonen-Dahlkvist.
“With this CD from the Danish label Danacord, the Danish pianist Kristian Riisager presents an impressive debut album – and with Beethoven’s Appassionata and Eroica Variations he also climbs one of the peaks of piano literature. His recording is neither a highly dramatic nor bombastic recording, just as little as it is intently thoughtful and brooding … it is highly personal. The pianist approaches these monuments with respect, humility, seriousness and the highest technical and interpretive concentration and precision. The result is breathtaking and refreshingly new. Kristian Riisager, who studied in Berlin and Copenhagen (and still studying), plays Beethoven at once analytically, crystal clear, free of sentimentality and yet touching, passionate and convincing. He has a serious, sonorous, if perhaps not further experimental approach to the variations. In the sonata he develops a natural intonation, a balanced mix between a captivating grip and a lyrical tone. Technically, he is without limitations: he has the necessary virtuosity for the Appassionata, hits the rhythmic pulse and poignantly highlights the advancing unrest. At the same time, his musical nuances and emphases reach right into the fastest and most expressive passages – with a sensitive touch at all times. What a business card! Looking forward to more…”
Interpretation 6/6, Sound 5/6, Repertoire choice 4/6
A poignancy haunts these songs by Rued Langgaard (1893-1952) quite beyond their affecting content. Composed between the ages of 13 and 24, they show his astonishing facility and expressive range from a very young age – and his stylistic eclecticism. What they don’t show is his looming antipathy towards, and struggle with, the Danish establishment that – despite a fecundity that produced 16 symphonies and more – would see Langgaard tragically shunned. He died largely forgotten and unheard, aged just 58.
The vast majority of the songs here are world-premiere recordings and represent a fifth of the total Langgaard composed. Performed with sensitivity and intelligence by soprano Louise McClelland Jacobsen and pianist Kristian Riisager, the settings feature adaptations from Russia and Ukraine alongside Danish texts, including by Langgaard himself.
Firmly late-Romantic, Wagner and Richard Strauss are clear influences alongside Grieg and others. Yet what arises is wholly distinctive and extends to a kind of impressionism that’s sparked by the bells Langgaard returns to again and again alongside vivid descriptions of birds, weather and landscapes – and that prefigures minimalism at points, for example, in the twin 1914 settings of Jenny Blicher-Clausen’s ‘Alle de små klokker’.
There’s even a hint of Weill-to-be about ‘Sigøjnervise’ (1916), Langgaard’s playful characterisation of Thor Lange’s south Russian gypsy girl. Indeed, it’s the set of eight songs from which this comes that contains arguably his most intriguing stylistic turns, with unusual harmonies and a paring-down of piano textures. But no song is merely outwardly descriptive. Each has a strong emotional resonance or narrative that speaks of the composer’s profound yearning for love. Optimism, desire, tenderness; transience, grief, loss. It’s all – heartbreakingly – here.
This is the Danish pianist Kris.an Riisager’s debut disc, and a wonderful entry it is! The recital contains three works from Beethoven’s middle period, all performed with a winning mixture of gusto, reflection and formal/structural awareness.
The opp. 35 and 34 variation sets, respectively, present the pianist as a lover of refreshingly asymmetrical detail in context. Even the opening E chord of the Eroica variations is a miniature exercise in controlled fire. Riisager rolls it slightly without sacrificing its net effect, a gesture leading equally convincingly into the hushed but expectant theme. His Puckish delivery is well-served by the B♭ with which he ends the first two phrases, curtailed in a way that increases whimsical anticipation. Like the opening of the first symphony’s fourth movement, this is Beethoven at his most deeply humorous, and Riisager adds a bit of variety, like seasoning, to each repetition. The way it all leads, say, to the left-hand virtuosity of the fourth variation, or, much later, to the pathetic E♭ minor variation and its succeeding combination of chorale and aria, demonstrates the range of his approach.
In a fundamental way, Riisager presents the other variation set as a contrast in microcosm, which it certainly is. He brings similar introspective attention to his voicing of the F-Major theme and brings the transition to D-Major off with particular success, lightening the mood without resorting to caricature. His transitions are gradual rather than forced or pointlessly overemphasized. All of this leads very naturally to the more strident B♭ variation, with its disorienting syncopations and registral and chromatic contrasts. All of the humor, introspection, and pathos from the Eroica set is here but scaled down, or distilled.
If Riisager’s treatment of the op. 57 sonata doesn’t crackle with the virtuosic energies of certain celebrated performances, such as those from Richter or Gilels, all of the traits informing the rest of the disc place the interpretation well beyond average. Each trill is rendered as if it were the first, and each moment takes its place afresh in the narrative. Listen to the E-Minor contrast emerging at 3:24 into the first movement, sweeping aside its just-stated parallel major with force but with that exquisite voicing so important to the pianist. This is certainly the case in the second movement’s beautifully resolute opening melody: Rissager’s gravitas leads to a beautifully shaped multi-tiered narrative arc, and ultimately to the diminished chord complex at 6:47. Again, if fire doesn’t burn the final movement to a cinder, there’s more than enough moment-to-moment intrigue to maintain interest.
None of this is to suggest any inability on Riisager’s part to navigate the larger forms, and when he reaches the last minute and a half of the sonata, the larger picture slams into sharp focus as the tempo increases. Even then though, he’s accenting the highest note of the left-hand arpeggiations, another nod to the detail too often neglected by many pianists. It sets him apart and goes a long way toward making this disc, a journey built around variation on multiple levels, the success it is. © 2023 Fanfare
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Photos: Julia Eva Severinsen