Interview :Niklas Johansen Plays Platero y Yo
BY ROBERT SCHULSLAPER

For twenty-five years, guitarist Lars Hannibal, co-founder of OUR Recordings with recorder player Michala Petri, dreamt of releasing an album of the complete score of Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s music inspired by Nobel Laureate Jaun Ramón Jiménez’s
Platero y Yo, an Andalusian Elegy. A serendipitous attendance at a performance of Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez featuring young Danish guitarist Niklas Johansen convinced him that he had finally found the right artist to whom to entrust this ambitious project. The winner of eight international guitar competitions and DR P2’s Young Artist of the Year, Niklas enthusiastically “spent countless hours studying and internalizing the work which he now performs in its entirety, by heart, in concert.” It was my pleasure to speak to Niklas about this exceptional release that not only documents his outstanding performance but includes the poems, biographical information about the composer and author, and illustrations by the Danish cartoonist Halfdan Pisket.

Welcome to Fanfare, Niklas. I’d like to begin by asking if you had met Lars Hannibal before he asked you to record Platero y Yo?

Yes, I actually went to one of his and Michala Petri’s concerts when I was a child. So I’ve known of him almost my whole life. I believe the first time we spoke was after a concert I played in 2018 with the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra. Ever since then, we’ve been in touch from time to time. I’ve attended some of his concerts, and he’s attended some of mine—Copenhagen is a small city.

Were you aware of the book before becoming involved with the music?

I was only vaguely aware of the book because I had heard some of the music. I had heard just a few of the pieces, but I didn’t realize how many there actually are. So many guitarists have played just a few of the pieces—understandably—but I think the music really comes into its own when you hear the contrast between all the different pieces. I only really got involved once I started working on the music myself.
How long did it take you to prepare for the recording?
Lars Hannibal introduced me to the music about three years ago, and I started by looking at the first volume. Then I began to read the poems and fell in love with the atmosphere of Jiménez’s and Tedesco’s world. Around a year later, I began fingering all the pieces with a clear goal of recording the complete work. Tedesco was not a guitarist, and several pieces are not playable exactly as written, so arranging and fingering the music was a major part of the preparation.

Is it true that you studied Spanish to be able to read the poems in their original language?

I already knew Spanish to some extent because I studied in Alicante in 2013, and I keep coming back to the country. The language has always fascinated me, and my interest in it only deepened once I started working with Platero y Yo. I could feel how I got more out of the poems the more I understood them in the original language. For example, in El Pozo (The Well), Jiménez is fascinated by the word ”pozo” itself and pronouncing it out loud in Spanish really gives me more of that feeling “as if it’s the word that, turning, drills through the dark earth until it reaches cold water.” Moments like this motivated me to improve my Spanish so that more of the poetry’s beauty could come through.

How well do you feel the music corresponds to the different sections of the story?

One of the most interesting things about this work is how closely each piece follows not just the atmosphere of the poem, but often the text itself—sentence by sentence, or even word by word. This is of course because the music was written to be performed with a narrator. In a few cases, the narration includes rhythmic notation to guide the recitation, or even melodic lines for singing parts of the text. This close connection to the poetry makes the music very mutable, constantly shifting in tone and texture. I’ve spent a lot of time considering how to approach the music in a way that preserves its versatility, but also works in this solo recording, where the narration is no longer present to shape the listener’s perception. The text is available in the booklet, but without being actively spoken, I think the music must carry more of the narrative weight. My interpretation tries to balance the music’s shifting, expressive nature with a sense of internal coherence that allows it to speak for itself.

What are your thoughts about the poems, aside from the music?

I find the poems deeply moving, and while studying the music I found myself delving even deeper into the texts to understand precisely which emotions I was meant to express. Although Tedesco only set 28 of the poems to music, Jiménez wrote a total of 138, and I’ve been reading all of them. What strikes me is their unique balance of childlike wonder and adult insight, which makes them both pure and profound. They often appear simple on the surface, yet they are full of existential reflection.
Halfdan Pisket is best known as a cartoonist. Does it surprise you that he was chosen to supply the accompanying illustrations?
I really appreciate the young and fresh expression of Pisket’s cartoon style. It would have been the standard in classical music to use a more romantic visual style, but I prefer that the album has this modern and youthful charm. And once you delve into the darker or more sorrowful poems, you really see how powerful his art can be. I also appreciate the choice of using only black and white drawings for the individual poems.

Lars has written that this album “becomes a kind of Gesamtkunstwerk, a cross-aesthetic project in which you can listen to the music inspired by the texts, while viewing images created by an artist who absorbed both the music and the essays.” Do you share his opinion?

Most definitely. As I mentioned, the work was originally written for narration and guitar. Tedesco himself acknowledged that the music generally works very well without the narration too, and many guitarists, including Segovia, have performed them as solo works. I think recording it for solo guitar puts a stronger spotlight on the music itself, and the solution of including the full text in the booklet is a great way to give space to both art forms. With the music, the poems, and Halfdan Pisket’s striking black-and-white illustrations, all you really need is a good glass of red wine—and all your senses are engaged at once. I’ve never been part of a project that was so carefully thought out in terms of the listener’s experience.

What is it like to perform such a substantial work—one hour and forty-nine minutes duration—in a concert?

Luckily, Tedesco divided the work into four volumes of seven pieces each. That’s also helpful to know when listening to the album, because the storyline “resets” with each volume, and every volume ends with a piece in which Platero is dead. As part of my preparation for the recordings, Lars Hannibal and I arranged two concerts with the first and last fourteen pieces, respectively. So far, I haven’t performed more than fourteen pieces in a single concert, and that already feels like a marathon. But the music is so ever-changing that I believe it still keeps the listener engaged.

From an acoustical standpoint it’s important to note that the CD was not recorded in a studio but rather in the Fredensborg Palace Chapel, to Lars “a setting whose warmth perfectly suits this Spanish music.”

I remember that my top priority was to record somewhere with the right warmth and sustain for the guitar, and Lars found this chapel to be the perfect setting. I immediately fell in love with the acoustics when I played the first note. Every note gets to breathe, but it’s not overly reverberant. In some of the pieces, I had to play in keys that don’t naturally bring out a lot of overtones on the guitar, so the chapel’s acoustic really helped keep the sound rich and resonant.

Do you play other music by Castelnuovo-Tedesco?

I’ve worked on his Tarantella and his Sonata Omaggio a Boccherini. I’ve also been looking at his Romancero Gitano for choir and guitar, based on texts by Federico García Lorca, which I would love to perform someday. And at some point, I’d like to explore both his solo and double concertos for guitar.

To satisfy the guitar aficionados among the readership, what can you tell us about the instrument you chose for this album?

I recorded the music on my favorite guitar. It was built by Arnoldo García in Granada, and I bought it back in 2013 when I studied in Alicante. I think the sound and temperament suit the Spanish character of the music very well. There are many impressive guitars out there, but I feel this one lets me explore every corner of the instrument’s expressive spectrum. That versatility is worth its weight in gold for a work like this.

I’ve read that you began to play the guitar when you were nine years old. What brought that about? Was music an important feature in your home?

Actually, no one in my close family are musicians. My father always listened to classical music, and I grew up with a lot of classical albums at home, but he listened even more to various kinds of rock music. I think I got my love of both genres from him. He’s just really good at listening attentively to music, and that’s something I’ve carried with me.

What captivated you about the guitar?

One important thing for me has always been that the guitar allows me to play everything by myself. Most other instruments can’t play so many voices simultaneously. Another amazing thing is that it feels like a little bit of all the other instruments. Its ability to play polyphonically gives it something of the piano’s role, but at the same time it has the vibrato of the strings and a wide variety of colors and effects.

Did you study classical music from the outset?

I did. In my teenage years I became interested in electric guitar and rock music, but one of the reasons I stayed with classical music was simply that I preferred the polyphony of the classical guitar, and how well it worked as a solo instrument.

If you like, tell us about some of your teachers from any stage of your development and how they have influenced you.

My music school teacher for ten years, Jens Overbye, had a huge influence on my interest in classical music. I’m very thankful to have had a teacher who was both dedicated and eager to provide a solid classical foundation, rather than just a bit of everything or some general-purpose guitar playing. When I began studying at the Royal Danish Academy of Music with Jesper Sivebæk, I was happy to find a teacher who combined a strong foundation with the open-mindedness I needed to find my own path. I really appreciate how personal and versatile the guitar class is in Copenhagen, and I credit Sivebæk for this because of his openness to the students’ ideas and his encouragement to go out and learn from others too. In 2014, I moved to Weimar to study with Ricardo Gallén, and his thoughts on phrasing, sound, and general musical approach have inspired me deeply. I still return to Weimar to attend his masterclasses, and his way of thinking continues to be an inexhaustible source of inspiration.

I recently came across a post on YouTube in which you’re improvising. Is this something you do often?

Yes, I often just sit and play whatever comes to mind. When I studied in Germany, I took a jazz improvisation class, but when I play alone, I’m usually drawn toward more meditative music without too many complex chord progressions.

Do you compose, as well, and if not, would you like to?

I’ve composed a little, and at some point, I’d like to develop that more and write some proper works. But for now, I have so many other things going on that I haven’t had the time and energy to fully commit to it.
As far as I know, you’ve previously released two recordings, the first, a solo disc, and the second, with violinist Kehan Zhang, an unusual combination of Paganini and Piazzolla, bookended by Tango by Jaime Zenamon and Elgar’s Salut d’Amour.

My solo disc was released as part of the first prize in the Mottola Guitar Competition in 2015, so I decided to record my main competition repertoire, which was mostly from the Classical–Romantic era and contemporary music. A few years later, I collaborated closely with the Chinese violinist Kehan Zhang, and we decided to make an album ahead of our three-month tour in China. Both albums combine contrasting genres, so this is my first album that truly presents a unified artistic statement—a cohesive work conceived and recorded as a whole, rather than a collection of contrasting pieces.

Plans for the future? Interesting projects, CDs, concerts?

Now that I have all 28 Platero y Yo pieces in my repertoire, I would like to perform them with narration, so after the release concert, this is definitely the plan. Besides this project, I am also releasing another album with my flautist Alena Walentin featuring music by American female composers. It will be out on Naxos in the fall, and we’ll have release concerts in both Denmark and the UK. I have many ideas in progress, but right now, I’m especially excited about this new album. I hope listeners will experience the full interplay of music, poetry, and illustration—and that this interpretation may contribute a fresh perspective to these beautiful poems.