Ingolf Wunder is a pianist who not only looks at the music from a pianistic point of view, but also puts much thought into the melodic line and the overall context. This intention became immediately clear in his interpretation of the Piano Concerto KV 467 by W.A. Mozart. He played the thematic lines of the famous work in good contact between the orchestra musicians and the conductor, and also focused on the rhetoric of Mozarts music. Highlights were the cadenzas, which came from Ingolf Wunder himself, because here the personality of the pianist and his sense for the tonal quality of the music of Mozart were particularly expressed. He created an atmosphere of resonance spaces and transformed the “flow of movement” exactly into such spaces.
Mozart.
When a composer is as famed as Mozart is and his compositions belong to the most popular and the most played of them all, there is a danger of making a standardised interpretation model. This may cause that after some time the interpreters don't even try to put some personal touch in the works they play and suddenly everything sounds the same.
That is not the case here. Ingolf Wunder's Mozart is fresh and lets the audience rediscover the composer. Not only because of the freer way he plays Mozart's works but also due to Wunder's own cadenzas in the concerti, with which the Austrian pianist pays tribute to the Austrian composer.
Bregenz Kulturzeitschrift | Silvia Thurner
Individual expressiveness
VOL.AT | Edgar Schmidt
Viennese classics
At the conductors stand was the Venezuelan Domingo Hindoyan, the Austrian top pianist Ingolf Wunder was the acclaimed soloist with Mozart. Once again, the SOV proved to be an orchestra of European rank. The strings with the internationally renowned Polish concertmaster Pawel Zalejski at the top, the rich brass sound, the homogeneous sonority of the orchestra ... the guest on the podium, the world-wide South American conductor Domingo Hindoyan (38), was able to do so with clear gestures and sensitive musicality to present the three popular masters authentically (for Austrian listening habits). The Piano Concerto No. 21, C major, KV 467, by Mozart. The already highly esteemed top Austrian pianist, Ingolf Wunder, was the soloist. The award- winning artist played with perfect technique (Liszt specialist), captivating a sensitive touch despite sonorously “speaking” with the notes. Together with the compassionate orchestra, he created an overwhelming interpretation. At the heart of the concerto, the floating Andante (unfortunately misused as a film soundtrack) was celebrated by Ingolf Wunder in a completely unsentimental and inwardly tender manner. The artful cadenzas were written by the pianist himself. Two delicious encores by Mozart and Debussy were Ingolf s “thanks you” for the enthusiastic applause.
Vorarlberger Tageszeitung | Thomas Thurnher
Easter cleaning with undusted Viennese classic
In the 5th subscription concert of the Symphonieorchesters Vorarlberg in Feldkirch we experienced unconventional and fresh music-making. A bundle of energy. For Mozarts Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major, the young Austrian pianist Ingolf Wunder was engaged. The joint-venture of this remarkably emotional pianist with the accurate and committed Vorarlberg Symphony Orchestra under the guidance of the South American Domingo Hindoyan, surprised us with an interpretation that left the old-laced, and already dusty traditions far behind. Play of colors. With surprisingly sprinkled spontaneously invented ornaments and decorative scales Ingolf Wunder was able to give the work totally new aspects. Hindoyan followed with convincing demonstrations of every musical idea with a clearly arranged and concisely phrased orchestral accompaniment. The beautifully singing cantilena in the second movement also became a play of colors, as Ingolf Wunder was able to transform the Steinway grand piano into a “pianoforte” with his accelerated touch. Far from any sentimentality, the pianist formed the character of a spontaneously invented improvisation and entered into a intense conversation with the orchestra with his melodies. All these brave sound experiments seemed to work. Many bravos and a big applause honored the committed interpretations of the ensemble.
As a first encore Ingolf Wunder “dreams” very freely about Mozarts D minor fantasy - in a way, as if he were inventing the piece just now! Also, a second encore, which the audience wanted very much. This time Claude Debussy's "Clair de lune" as fresh as if he would play it from Debussy’s still wet ink on the music sheet.
Leipziger Volkszeitung | Peter Korfmacher
Inspired naturalness
Ingolf Wunder, 30, is not a boastful pianobeast, not a virtuoso who is intoxicated by the thunder of chords and sparkles of arpeggios. That’s why on Sunday evening his encore wasn’t the spark striking Sigismund Thalberg transcription of Vincenzo Bellinis Normas aria "Casta Diva", but instead he took a bow before the chaste goddess with all humility and tenderness. He let the Steinway gently sing in the footsteps of the Bellini admirer Chopin and created the enraptured magic of this splendid music out of the beauty of the vocal line and the silence, which he never left further than it was needed.
The musicality of this perseveringly demanded encore exemplifies the piano-playing of the young Austrian, whose culture of the subtle touch was unmistakably influenced by his mentor, the still unmatched Chopin specialist, Adam Harasiewicz.
Before that Wunder took us out of this world and into the skies with his Mozarts C major Piano Concerto KV 467, with the same delicacy and stylistic assurance, the same scrupulous avoidance of unnecessary effect .
Mozart is complicated. And the more popular a piece is, the more complicated it becomes. This Piano Concerto is one of the most popular: therefore much violence has been done to the magically floating Andante. It often sounds sentimental, almost always sweet and as a result usually too harmless and insignificant. But with Wunder the right hand sings in sonorous intimacy, while the chord repetitions in the left hand do the magic. Nothing sounds put-on, nothing too much and nothing insincere in his inspired naturalness. This also applies to his own cadenzas that this extraordinary pianist gave to the 1st and 3rd movements. These were symphonically developed, almost strict in their contrapuntal precision and formal sophistication and musically so rich that one would have liked them to be even longer. One cannot praise enough the fact alone that a young pianist steps onto the thin ice of autonomous “cadencing”.
In the Allegro maestoso as well as the Allegro vivace, from which the solo cadenza beautifully arises, the following applies: For Ingolf Wunder music is everything and the technique (which is of course flawless) is only a means to an end. Welcome to the Mozart-Olympus next to Zacharias and Buchbinder.
The MDR-Orchestra would also not do too badly up there, which accompanied very responsive and aromatically under the direction of Markus Stenz, who jumped in for the injured Dennis Russell Davies. The radio orchestra around concertmaster Andreas Hartmann willingly absorbed the creative impulses of Stenz and the pianist and took them into the tutti, engraving the precious lines with a silver pen and reacted sensitively to Wunder’s wonderful play of colors.