WINTER TALES

 

WINTER TALES

 

Víkingur Ólafsson MOZART & CONTEMPORARIES

 

MOZART & CONTEMPORARIES

MOBY Reprise

 

REPRISE

 

Víkingur Ólafsson PHILIP GLASS Piano Works

 

PIANO WORKS

 

Víkingur Ólafsson REFLECTIONS

 

 REFLECTIONS

VÍKINGUR ÓLAFSSON Reflections Part 1 - DEBUSSY Bruyères

 

REFLECTIONS PART 1

 

Víkingur Ólafsson BACH - CHOPIN

 

BACH - CHOPIN

 

Víkingur Heiðar Ólafsson DEBUT

 

DEBUT

 

JÓHANN JÓHANNSSON Retrospective II - Rarities

RETROSPECTIVE II - RARITIES

 

Víkingur Ólafsson DEBUSSY - RAMEAU

                                                            DEBUSSY - RAMEAU

DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON | THE BEST OF BEST SELECTED BY RYUICHI SAKAMOTO

                             THE BEST OF BEST SELECTED BY RYUICHI SAKAMOTO

Víkingur Ólafsson BACH REWORKS / PART 2

Possessing a rare combination of passionate musicality, explosive virtuosity and intellectual curiosity, pianist Víkingur Ólafsson has been heralded “Iceland’s Glenn Gould” by the New York Times (Anthony Tommasini, August 2017). Before lighting up the international scene in 2016, Ólafsson won all the major prizes in his native country, including four Musician of the Year prizes at the Icelandic Music Awards, and the Icelandic Optimism Prize.

In September 2018 Víkingur Ólafsson released his new album on Deutsche Grammophon, Johann Sebastian Bach, featuring an eclectic selection of the composer’s keyboard works. In an ingeniously woven tapestry of diverse original compositions as well as transcriptions from different eras, Ólafsson’s “inspired playing makes Bach more human than we’ve heard in a long time” (Süddeutsche Zeitung, 2018). The Bach album follows on from the global success (“Breathtakingly brilliant pianist” (Gramophone) of the Philip Glass Etudes, Ólafsson’s debut recording for the label after signing as an exclusive recording artist in 2016.

NEW COLOURS OF BACH

2018 marks 333 years since the birth of Johann Sebastian Bach; music in Bach’s time went far beyond the superficial process of just placing pleasing harmonies on manuscript paper – it had religious significance and meaning built into its very structure. Of particular prominence in some of Bach’s music are references to the number three, reflecting the important doctrine of God’s Tri-unity which lies at the core of Bach’s Lutheran faith. So for Bach at least, 333 would have had real significance.

“Bach is regularly singled by composers across all traditions from jazz, pop, world and classical for his unique importance,” says Paul Moseley, Universal Music Group’s Director of Bach 333. “We have set out to do him, his life, his world, full justice, taking in current and past performance practice, fresh scholarship and the latest media, to produce something that will educate, entertain and deepen our relationship with probably the most influential composer of all time.”  

New Colours of Bach explores Bach's unique impact on the world of music, featuring today's artists, composers and remixers including Víkingur Ólafsson and Peter Gregson.

Víkingur Ólafsson BACH REWORKS / PART 1

Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson began making his mark on the wider classical music world in the mid-2010s, after winning several major arts prizes in his homeland.
Ólafsson began his studies at home in Iceland, then earned his bachelor's and master's degrees from Juilliard, where his primary teachers were Jerome Lowenthal and Robert McDonald. By 2017, he had premiered five piano concertos, working directly with composers such as Philip Glass, Daníel Bjarnason, and Haukur Tómasson, whose concerto he premiered during the 2016-2017 season. He has also collaborated on projects with visual artists such as Roman Signer and Lillevän, and musicians like Sayaka Shoji, Pekka Kuusisto, and Björk.

Ólafsson's recital programs are thoughtfully assembled, linking music by theme, historical context, tonality, or a combination of elements. That kind of care and insight led him to host a TV series about classical music for the Icelandic National Broadcasting Service entitled Útúrdúr ("Out-of-tune," 2013-2014), and to him being named artistic director of Iceland's Vinterfest, taking over in 2016 from the music festival's founding director, Martin Fröst. Ólafsson is also founder and artistic director of the Reykjavik Midsummer Music festival.

Having by then released three albums on his own, including Schubert's Winterreise with bass Kristinn Sigmundsson, he signed an exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon in November 2016. His first release on the label, Philip Glass: Piano Works, appeared in January 2017. Later that same year, he was the featured pianist on Dario Marianelli's score for the Academy Award-nominated film Darkest Hour, about Winston Churchill.  (Patsy Morita)

Víkingur Ólafsson JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH

Víkingur Ólafsson is a musical free spirit with a mission. He first made the classical world sit up and listen in early 2017 with his recording of solo piano works by Philip Glass – a fascinating journey through the time and space of their minimalist structures. Glass is now followed by Bach. Set for release in September, Ólafsson’s second Deutsche Grammophon album, the pithily entitled Bach, contains a mixture of original works and transcriptions which the pianist has woven together in intriguing style.

“It would all mean nothing without Bach,” says Ólafsson. “If Glass’s music is minimal, then Bach’s is maximal!” Having studied his music intensively, he here casts new light on some of the composer’s many different faces. Excerpts from the Well-Tempered Clavier such as the Prelude and Fugue in E minor, BWV 855 or contrapuntal gems such as the Sinfonia No. 15 in B minor, BWV 801 showcase him as, in Ólafsson’s words, “the master of the short story”, while the larger-scale but playful Aria variata, BWV 989 forms the structural heart of the album. The original works are juxtaposed with colourful contributions from other composers, including Rachmaninov’s arrangement of the Gavotte from the Partita No. 3 for Violin in E major, BWV 1006; Busoni’s transcription of the chorale “Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ”; and Ólafsson’s own mesmerising transcription of the first aria from the solo cantata for alto “Widerstehe doch der Sünde”. As his Glass album demonstrated, the pianist is an intelligent and innovative sculptor of sound, an artist who defies conventional categorization and is redefining classical music. On Bach, the 34-year-old’s lean but immensely expressive playing captivates listeners, his eloquence and the sensuous delight he takes in experimentation holding them spellbound.

The infinitely inspirational power of Bach’s music will be heard again on Ólafsson’s next recording. Scheduled for release on Deutsche Grammophon in late 2018/early 2019, the album will bring together atmospheric reworkings of music by composers such as Hans-Joachim Roedelius, Ben Frost, Peter Gregson and Valgeir Sigurðsson – reimaginings that artfully defragment the creations of Bach. It will also feature a moving and intimate new work Ólafsson has written in memory of his late friend and colleague Jóhann Jóhannsson.

“Everything is there in Johann Sebastian’s music: architectural perfection and profound emotion,” says Ólafsson. In his hands, the universe that is Bach shines with new light.

JÓHANN JÓHANNSON Englabörn & Variations

The late Jóhann Jóhannsson was already a familiar face within the Reykjavik music scene when his compatriot Hávar Sigurjónsson approached him to compose for Englabörn, his latest play. The musician had played in countless guitar bands since the mid-1980s, as well as collaborating with other like-minded souls, and he was also the mastermind behind Kitchen Motors, an art collective and record label with an electronic and experimental bent. So widespread were Jóhannsson’s interests, in fact, that the same year as Englabörn he released the debut by his latest band, Apparat Organ Quartet. The two couldn’t have been more different: while Apparat Organ Quartet traded in playful instrumental keyboard pop, performed on refurbished vintage instruments alongside a drummer, Englabörn sounded like little anyone had ever heard. A peaceful, graceful intermingling of style, form and content, it was sometimes agonisingly desolate, sometimes gloriously uplifting, but never less than astonishing.

These days, of course, it’s almost impossible to imagine a world without music like Jóhannsson’s. Alongside composers like Max Richter – whose debut, Memoryhouse, had appeared only a few months earlier – he helped blur the lines between classical and electronic music, giving birth inadvertently to a genre now known somewhat disingenuously as ‘new’ or ‘neo-classical’. Over the years that followed, he composed some of the greatest film scores of the contemporary age, and others since – including Ólafur Arnalds and A Winged Victory For The Sullen – have joined him in bringing this new, strangely indefinable sound into the mainstream. Back then, however, this delicate mesh of digital and analogue, of traditional and radical, of old and new, was considered exceptional, in every sense of the word. Moreover, it displayed everything that would set Jóhannsson’s work apart, even if it took time for the world to recognise how the simplicity of its beauty matched the purity of his premise. But catch up they eventually would.

Englabörn – the album – isn’t the original score to Sigurjónsson’s play. Instead, that blossomed into a free-standing album, its sixteen sublime miniatures steeped in austere melodic elegance and profound melancholy. “The music took on a life of its own,” Jóhannsson recalled during preparations for the reissue. “It wasn’t intended to be my first album as a solo artist. Like a fine example of Taoist serendipity and ‘doing without doing’, this material simply demanded to exist as a work in its own right. And, as someone who embraces chance and letting go, and who tries to listen to what the music I compose wants to be – rather than what I want it to be – I was happy to oblige and spend the time required to make it into its own independent work.”

At the time, though it received some positive international coverage, Englabörn’s seamless blend of classical and electronic instruments – released by London’s experimental Touch label – remained something of a hidden gem. Slowly, however, word seeped from his homeland, far out in the North Atlantic, to the world beyond. “There weren’t many composers combining classical instruments with digital processing in this way then,” Jóhannsson said, “but people were ready.” That it’s ended up being reissued sixteen years later by Deutsche Grammophon confirms how far the world has now come.

Víkingur Ólafsson PHILIP GLASS Piano Works

Deutsche Grammophon is delighted to announce the signing of an exclusive agreement with Víkingur Ólafsson and looks forward to collaborating with the  Icelandic pianist on a range of innovative recording projects.

Ólafsson has recently finished making his first album for the yellow label at Reykjavík’s iconic Harpa concert hall. Christian Badzura, Executive Producer, Deutsche Grammophon Artists & Repertoire, says, “Víkingur is an exceptional pianist and curator. His performance, choices of repertoire and visions for recorded sound are a fresh breeze in the classical music world. Be it Scarlatti, Rameau, Bach or Glass, Víkingur’s interpretations sound timeless.”

Described by The New York Times as a “splendid pianist” and by Piano News as an “immense talent”, Ólafsson is much sought-after by international conductors, orchestras and artists as both a chamber and concert musician. Now 32, he graduated in 2008 from The Juilliard School, where he studied with Robert McDonald, and has since released three albums on Dirrindí, the label he set up in 2009. Last year he contributed two solo piano pieces and the Valse des fleurs for piano four hands to Deutsche Grammophon’s 30-CD Stravinsky Complete Edition. Ólafsson is also Artistic Director of the annual Reykjavík Midsummer Music festival, which he founded in 2012, and last year took over from Martin Fröst as curator of Sweden’s Vinterfest.

“Víkingur is already very well-known in his native Iceland, where he’s been named ‘Musician of the Year’ four times. He brings a new Nordic sensibility to the classical repertoire, making him an exceedingly good choice as artistic director and curator of major music festivals”, notes Dr Clemens Trautmann, President of Deutsche Grammophon. “At DG, we’ve known for a while that Iceland is a hot-spring of top-notch musical creativity and Víkingur is one of its leading figures. Now we look forward to bringing his immense musical talent in classical as well as new repertoire to the attention of a worldwide audience.”

Ólafsson has commissioned and premiered, to date, five new piano concertos from different young composers, and has collaborated on diverse musical projects with a broad range of artists and musicians. These include conductors Vladimir Ashkenazy and Rafael Payare, as well as his compatriot Björk and composers Mark Simpson and Philip Glass.

The latter is the sole focus of Ólafsson’s latest recording project. Philip Glass: Piano Works will be released by Deutsche Grammophon in late January to coincide with the composer’s 80th birthday. The pianist’s fascination with reinterpreting the Piano Etudes grew as he toured and performed the works with Glass himself. “On the surface, they seem to be filled with repetitions. But the more one plays and thinks about them, the more their narratives seem to travel along in a spiral,” he explains. “My approach to each of the etudes is to enable the listener to create his or her own personal space of reflection. A partnership with Deutsche Grammophon, home of so many legendary pianists, will ensure my music reaches the ears of many more of those listeners. So of course I am honoured and excited to join DG.” (Deutsche Grammophon)