Víkingur Ólafsson pf

DG 

This extraordinary album with its apt title, From Afar, is dedicated to György Kurtág and was inspired by the 96-year-old ‘giant of contemporary music’. The result is a mosaic interspersing arrangements (some by Kurtág, some by Ólafsson) with works by Schumann, Brahms and Bartók in what Ólafsson movingly calls Kurtág’s ‘trail of shiny little stones in a moonlit forest’.

Ólafsson’s imaginative resourcefulness knows no bounds, making even outwardly unlikely transitions become true and inevitable. The Bach-Kurtág Chorale Prelude Christe, du Lamm Gottes is like a slow carillon, while Schumann’s Study in Canonic Form both maintains and denies its academic title. In the same composer’s ‘Traumerei’ from Kinderszenen angelic dreams are only fleetingly troubled, and the quizzical ‘Prophet Bird’ from Waldszenen wings its way into the 20th century.

Then there is Brahms’ near-minimalist Intermezzo Op 116/5, for Ólafsson ‘the most modern work Brahms ever wrote’, paving the way to Webern and from there to Kurtág. Ólafsson is joined by his wife Halla Oddný Magnúsdóttir in Kurtág’s transcription of Bach’s Trio Sonata No 1.

The whole album has been recorded twice – once on a Steinway grand, then again on a felt-covered upright for greater intimacy and a sense of nostalgia. This is indeed an album of ‘conversations and messages’ heard as if from afar.

DG has done Ólafsson proud in its lavish presentation and immaculate recording of his equally immaculate and committed performances.