Congratulations on such a milestone! Are you very conscious of having a different audience through such online success?

Sometimes, sometimes not. But I remember when I played the Goldberg Variations twice for sold-out halls in the Konzerthaus in Vienna, and the press wrote about the unusual amount of people in jeans in the audience, which I thought was quite wonderful! But also when at the end of the year everybody is posting online their Spotify top five tracks or artists – and I just saw a list from Indiana where you have some JS Bach and myself, right next to three country artists! I thought that was wonderful too.

It must be exciting – and a responsibility – to play such a role in attracting new people to classical music.

Honestly, I’m surprised because I’m not really playing crossover things much, I’m playing the Goldberg Variations, or the new John Adams concerto, or the late Beethoven sonatas, things like that. But for Bach and for classical music, as you point out, it’s really, really good news. And I’m not the only one who is streaming really well in classical music. To think that the Goldberg Variations were written for essentially nobody, for a Count who wanted to fall asleep and for Johann Gottlieb Goldberg who was a 14-year-old student of Bach, and published with no great hope of any real circulation in his time – and then you see the work having something like close to 100 million streams in one year from my album alone, plus all the other Goldberg Variation albums, and you get a number that Bach would not have believed – I wish he had been able to see it. I think it’s a golden age for classical music, but we’re just not noticing it.

Tell us about the new piano concerto, After the Fall, that John Adams has written for you.

He’s really one of the very great composers of our time. I left the creative process obviously to him, though was always ready to comment if ever had a question – however he didn’t have a single question for me, because he knows his craft so well, and he knows me so well! He sent me the notes about nine months ago, I played through it and I immediately recognised myself in it. It felt like coming home but to a home I’ve never been to before – it’s a little bit like going to the tailor and having something gorgeous bespoke made for you. He’s actually brought something to this concerto that will really take people by surprise, and one of the people who pays a visit during the piece is good old Johann Sebastian Bach, for whom we both share a fascination and sense of love.

Víkingur Ólafsson performs ‘After the Fall’ with the San Francisco Symphony on Jan 16, 18 & 19, and with the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich on Jan 22, 23 & 24