Víkingur Ólafsson pf
DG 486 4553

‘Clavier Exercise, consisting of an Aria with [30] diverse variations for harpsichord with two manuals, composed for connoisseurs, for the refreshment of their spirits.’ So goes the title-page of the Goldbergs, published in Nuremberg in 1741. Among the first wonders of the repertory, laying the foundations for the big 19th-century variation cycles to come of Beethoven and Brahms (its poignant closing G major Aria recollection wasn’t lost on the former when, referencing the 1802 Zurich reprint, he came to pen the Diabelli), it’s a work central to Víkingur Ólafsson’s currently touring 2023-24 concert season.

Reflecting on its scale and virtuoso challenge, its ‘countless instances of exalted poetry, abstract contemplation and deep pathos’, Ólafsson was inclined formerly, he says, ‘to think of [it] as a grand, commanding cathedral of music, magnificent in its structure and intricate in its ornamentation. Now I find another metaphor more apt: that of a grand oak tree, no less magnificent, but somehow organic, living and vibrant, its forms both responsive and regenerative, its leaves constantly unfurling to produce musical oxygen for its admirers through some metaphysical, time-bending photosynthesis.’ This fine recording refreshes and vitalises our interest.

Given that the score contains scant tempo and no dynamic markings, Ólafsson offers a considered, varied, dramatised, organic landscape. Pondered reflection and biting brilliance, elegant cadencing and arched phrasing, song and dance, lithe counterpoint, the limpid and the gruff, go hand in hand. His taut yet pliable rhythms, his touch, articulation and clarity of linear voicing and decoration contribute to a compelling, projected pianistic overview, likewise his cameo-like conception and characterisation of each variation, spaced with time to breathe. The lonely deep-space G minor cosmos of Variation 25 – Wanda Landowska’s ‘black pearl’ – is intensely imagined, reinforcing Glenn Gould’s assertion that there’s never been ‘a richer lode of enharmonic relationships any place between Gesualdo and Wagner’. A cultured, elevated release, not to be missed.