Timeless Music

Vikingur Ólafsen is a pianist at the peak of his powers

When a concert audience includes such luminaries of the music world as Jools Holland and Steven Isserlis, you know you’re in for a treat.

And last Friday, at the Royal Festival Hall, the Icelandic pianist Vikingur Ólafsson treated us to a performance of Bach’s Goldberg variations that was a privilege to witness.

Still only 39, over the last decade or so Ólafsson has taken the world of classical music by storm: equally comfortable with classical and contemporary repetoires, he has worked with Philip Glass and Bjork, premiered pieces by John Adams and a host of Icelandic composers, and won numerous accolades for his recordings of works by Brahms, Debussy, Chopin and, of course, Bach.

And it has to be Bach, the purest of all composers, who offers an exceptional pianist like Ólafsson the richest seam of perfectly-formed music to mine.

The Goldberg variations must charge a musican with an enormous responsibility to the composer and his timeless music, but at the same time present a supreme opportunity to create something new and original from the sublime material.

Glenn Gould chose the Goldberg Variations for his debut recording in 1955. At the time, the work was not part of the standard repetoire; but Gould’s recording, which became one of the fastest selling classical records ever, made it so, almost overnight.

Bach left no instruction as to how the work was to be played. Gould’s exceptionally fast tempi meant his recording lasted a mere thirty-eight minutes, though he did leave out some of the repeats which Ólafsson included in his performance, which lasted twice as long. Not that this was a slow rendition; his varied pace and at times theatrical pauses made for a performance, which, as Clive Paget said in his review for the Guardian, provided ‘a reading that added up to considerably more than the sum of its 32 parts’.

It’s usually when I’m watching jazz pianists that I notice the extent to which they play with their whole body, not just their hands. On the basis of this performance Ólafsson would surely make a exceptional jazz man. Indeed, a listen to his 2020 recording of music by Claude Debussy, perhaps the greatest classical influence on jazz composition, fully confirms his modernist credentials.

The instant standing ovation was (for once) fully deserved, and the buzz among the audience as we filtered out into the cool September evening was tangible. As Jessica Duchen wrote in her review for iNews, ‘this was a remarkable performance from Ólafsson – one that left me filled with hope’.

Ólafsson is currently artist-in-residence at the Southbank Centre. I will be taking every opportunity to see him play, and if you enjoy great music making, so should you.

And if you can’t get to see him play the Goldberg Variations as he tours it round the world over the next six months, you might enjoy his recently released recording.