Live Review: OLAFUR ARNALDS @ Sydney Opera House

It was quite fitting that the day Sydney received a month’s worth of rain Icelandic producer Olafur Arnalds landed in town for his show at the Opera House. The city had come to a grinding halt with flights cancelled and roads closed and Arnalds was fortunate to touchdown two hours before the show started.  Composer Max Richter had to deal with similar conditions two years ago when he played his eight hour opus Sleep at the Opera House for the VIVID Festival. Arnalds is renowned for blending cinematic soundscapes with piano loops and ambient electronics, the multi-instrumentalist is in Australia to tour his new album Re:member.
Arnalds walked onto the lowlit concert hall  with his string quartet and a drummer and took a seat at one of his three pianos. He said they had come all the way from Iceland by boat a month or so ago and was relieved they arrived safely, especially in light of the storms. The audience were then asked to sing back one note to Arnalds so he could record and loop it into the concert’s  opening track which turned out to be the epic Only The Winds from his 2013 album For Now I Am Winter. It was a bold move to open with such a dramatic piece of music but it commanded the audience’s attention immediately, especially  with Arnald‘s delicate piano building  into a debilitating crescendo of drums and strings.

Throughout the show Arnalds sprinkled older songs into the set which seamlessly blended into the newer material from his latest album. The stage was bathed in a luminous orange light for Re:member and Unfold, which then flickered around perfectly in time with the song. For the more sombre numbers such as Only The Winds and 3326,  a blue hue descended upon the stage adding an extra layer of gravitas to the performance. One of the highlights of the night was Undir ; a glitch breakbeat IDM inspired track that nearly had Arnalds leaping out of his stool and dancing on more than one occasion.

One of the most interesting things about Arnalds is that he is very easy going and humorous for someone that is into classical music. As he came back onstage for the encore he dedicated a song to his late grandmother (Lag fyrir ömmu) who played a huge part in his musical upbringing. He said that when he was a teenager he liked punk & death metal and his grandmother in Reykjavik would invite him over to fix her ‘broken’ radio. She instilled a love of classical music in him on these visits and was one of his biggest fans when his career took off. He turned his back on the audience and then played this song on one of the smaller pianos and one could almost hear a pin drop after he played the last note. A few seconds he stood up, bowed and left the stage.