Pianist Víkingur Ólafsson: 'Everyone knows how to listen to music, just like we know how to drink water'

The Icelandic-born musician’s fresh approach to Bach has won him rave reviews and a record of the year award. Why is he now mixing the baroque composer with electronic music?

‘We’re in a golden age for classical music,” says Víkingur Ólafsson. Spend time in the 35-year-old’s musical company and you might well agree. His album, Bach, has just been named recording of the year in the BBC Music Magazine awards – no surprise given the five-star raves it received on its release in September. “Ravishing … a miracle of delicate control”, “Ólafsson’s Bach will quench your thirst”, “infectiously joyous energy… he is a remarkable musician” said the critics. The collection of 35 short pieces features original Bach works for keyboard interspersed with a variety of transcriptions that, from Stradal to Ólafsson himself via Kempff, Busoni, and Rachmaninov, traverse the last 150 years of Bach readings.

In a world hardly short of Bach recordings, his does feel genuinely revelatory. I’ve been listening to it daily for six months, and have pressed copies into the hands of friends and family with evangelistic zeal. How has Ólafsson found such a fresh and serene approach?

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from Culture | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2GSw6KA