Vikingur Olafsson comes understandably surrounded in a halo of awards and praise. And hearing him once more on his new, most carefully crafted and individual offering, you may well feel you are listening to the most powerfully yet subtly individual voice of all younger pianists. Everything is lit both from within and without and , above all, making you stop to wonder whether you have truly heard the works on this selection of Bach, Beethoven and Schubert before.
Opening with Bach's E minor Prelude from Book 1 you note his light, delectable touch and a magical chime that acknowledges both the past and the present. This is followed by Beethoven's E minor Sonata, opus 90 and a performance playing over the widest dynamic range, delicate one moment, storming the next. How modern he makes this Sonata sound, giving you a vital and renewed sense of Beethoven's prophecy, of music pulled dramatically in one direction and another, from bleakness to largesse. Any suggestion of Mendelssohnian urbanity in the second movement's lyrical unfolding is erased. There is serenity yet also a nervy, unsettled undertow that is unmistakably Beethoven. It can seem repetitious in lesser hands, here it is not a note too long.
Again, in Bach's E minor Partita you are left wondering how it is possible to achieve this degree of focus and penetration. In the 'Sarabande' Olafsson conjures a well of profundity making the following 'Tempo di Gavotte' sound all the more perky and resilient in vivid contrast. The 'Sarabande' from the French Suite in E major, for Olafsson 'a final benediction,' ends the programme, but before that there is Schubert's E minor Sonata D.566, an original choice where even Radu Lupu(once aptly described as 'a lyricist in a thousand') could not have made the opening more darkly questioning.
In Beethoven's opus 109 Sonata, the heart of the programme, Olafsson is memorably alert to the opening contrast; ' vivace ma non troppo-Adagio espressivo' to reflection and volatility, and he achieves a seraphic calm in the opening and close of the third movement variations In his own words, this is 'music of the future fuelled by the music of the past.'
More generally, Olafsson tells you of how rapidly musical attitude and taste alter over the years. There is a wide gulf between his approach, his articulacy and above all his poise, from the playing of earlier celebrated Bach players, of Edwin Fisher, Rosalyn Tureck, Glenn Gould and Andras Schiff. Again, he makes pianists of an equal stature in Beethoven, say, Schnabel and Kempff, seem oddly distant.
DG captures Olafsson's sonority, whether warm or crystalline to perfection, include the pianist's own absorbing essay, and also four photographs of him in what I take to be his native Iceland.
Bryce Morrsion