Continuum II Víkingur Ólafsson

• Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 - 1750): Keyboard Concerto No. 1 in D Major, BWV 972 (After Vivaldi, RV 230):
• 1 Bach: Keyboard Concerto No. 1 in D Major, BWV 972 (After Vivaldi, RV 230): II. Larghetto 02:35
• Prelude in D Minor, BWV 926:
• 2 Bach: Prelude in D Minor, BWV 926 00:48
• Prelude in D Major, BWV 925:
• 3 Bach: Prelude in D Major, BWV 925 00:57
• Air on the G String (Arr. Ólafsson for Piano from Orchestral Suite No. 3, BWV 1068):
• 4 Bach: Air on the G String (Arr. Ólafsson for Piano from Orchestral Suite No. 3, BWV 1068) 03:39
• Drum fahrt nur immer hin, ihr Eitelkeiten, BWV 123/VI:
• 5 Bach: Drum fahrt nur immer hin, ihr Eitelkeiten, BWV 123/VI (Performed on Piano) 01:21
• Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern, BWV 436
• 6 Bach: Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern, BWV 436 (Performed on Piano) 01:16
• Erbarm dich mein, o Herre Gott, BWV 721
• 7 Bach: Erbarm dich mein, o Herre Gott, BWV 721 (Performed on Piano) 05:37
• Prelude in C Major, BWV 924a
• 8 Bach: Prelude in C Major, BWV 924a 01:26
• Violin Sonata No. 5 in F Minor, BWV 1018:
• 9 Bach: Violin Sonata No. 5 in F Minor, BWV 1018: III. Adagio (Arr. Ólafsson for Piano & Strings) 04:49
• Prelude in F Major, BWV 928:
• 10 Bach: Prelude in F Major, BWV 928 01:01
• Prelude in G Minor, BWV 930:
• 11 Bach: Prelude in G Minor, BWV 930 01:11
• Prelude in F Major, BWV 927:
• 12 Bach: Prelude in F Major, BWV 927 00:38
• Keyboard Concerto in F Minor, BWV 1056:
• 13 Bach: Keyboard Concerto in F Minor, BWV 1056: II. Largo 03:31
• Welt, ade! ich bin dein müde, BWV 27/VI:
• 14 Bach: Welt, ade! ich bin dein müde, BWV 27/VI (Performed on Piano) 01:27
• Nun ruhen alle Wälder, BWV 392:
• 15 Bach: Nun ruhen alle Wälder, BWV 392 (Performed on Piano) 01:06
• Ob bei uns der Sünden viel, BWV 38/VI:
• 16 Bach: Ob bei uns der Sünden viel, BWV 38/VI (Performed on Piano) 01:12
• Es ist genug, BWV 60/V:
• 17 Bach: Es ist genug, BWV 60/V (Performed on Piano) 01:27
• Air on the G String (Arr. Ólafsson for Piano from Orchestral Suite No. 3, BWV 1068):
• 18 Bach: Air on the G String (Arr. Ólafsson for Piano from Orchestral Suite No. 3, BWV 1068) (Upright Version) 03:32
• Total Runtime 37:33

Info for Continuum II

For more than thirty years, Víkingur Ólafsson has played a little Bach every day. “Bach has become my diary,” says the pianist. “Playing his music is the one constant in my life.” That lifelong conversation continues with CONTINUUM II, the second instalment of his acclaimed CONTINUUM project and the first album to be recorded entirely in his new Icelandic home studio, The Nutshell. Bringing together original keyboard works alongside new arrangements and transcriptions.

Ólafsson comments: “I have never had the stamina to keep a journal for longer than a few weeks. But for over thirty years, I have played a little Bach on the piano every day. It is the one constant factor in my life, no matter what else is going on. Playing his music is a way of putting your particular experience into context with the universal. Even your location in time and space becomes a little trivial. Bach wrote some of his greatest works for a very small audience in a time when he was considered behind the times, a man of the past. As we know now, it turns out he was writing for all of us, for the future. When I play Bach, I am reminded that historical eras in music are notions we superimpose on what is essentially a continuum: an unbroken thread linking us all, a running stream flowing through us – what the Germans, incidentally, call a Bach. This recording project is called Continuum. It is my personal Bach journal, an ongoing conversation with his music and a tribute to his art.”

Ólafsson released the first volume of CONTINUUM in October 2024 and, since then, has won his first GRAMMY Award® for his recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, surpassed one billion streams worldwide – half of them from Bach repertoire – and built The Nutshell: a teak-walled, fully remote recording studio beneath his home in Iceland.

On turning forty, Ólafsson began thinking about what he wanted the next decade of his life to look like. One answer was the freedom to record with complete spontaneity. “If the urge strikes,” he explains, “I can simply wander downstairs late at night in my pyjamas, press a couple of buttons, and start recording.”

That spirit shapes CONTINUUM II. As his first true “album domesticum”, it centres on music associated with the home: intimate, reflective works that reveal Bach at his most personal. At its heart are six chorales that Ólafsson plays on the piano, including Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern, BWV 436; Welt, ade!, BWV 27/VI; and Es ist genug, BWV 60/V.

“I haven’t come across them recorded on the piano,” he notes. “But to me they seem newly revealed in that medium. I particularly love how they sound in the fragile sonority of the upright piano.”

It was producer Christopher Tarnow who suggested including an arrangement of the early organ chorale prelude Erbarm dich mein, o Herre Gott. “I have to admit I had never heard this work before. Bach wrote it when he was around twenty years old, and the first time I played it I immediately realised it was the kind of music that stays with you for the rest of your life. Its desolate beauty, its impossibly unpredictable harmonic progression, its lamentoso spirit that almost feels like a nineteenth-century lied… We don’t know what’s around the next corner, but we want Bach to hold our hand and take us there. It is the sort of work I never want to end once I begin playing it.”

For the album, Ólafsson recorded both grand and upright piano versions of his own arrangement of Bach’s Air from the Orchestral Suite No. 3, better known as the Air on the G String. He dedicated the score to György Kurtág as a gift for the composer’s 100th birthday earlier this year.

The programme also includes the Largo from the Keyboard Concerto No. 5 in F minor; Ólafsson’s arrangement of the Adagio from the Violin Sonata No.5 in F minor for piano, string quartet and double bass, performed with the Siggi String Quartet and bassist Xun Yang; and the Larghetto from the Keyboard Concerto No. 1 in D major, arranged by Bach himself from a Vivaldi original.

Completing the programme – and encapsulating the intimate, domestic spirit of CONTINUUM II – are six of the short preludes Bach wrote as practice pieces for his pupils, including his own children. Their brevity, Ólafsson suggests, conceals remarkable depth.

“Each is an inspired miniature, a complete musical world in itself. Recorded here on the grand piano, they remind me that some of Bach’s most profound thoughts are also among his most compact.”

The artist’s acclaimed collaboration with Olafur Eliasson – his performance of Bach’s Goldberg Variations at Lucerne Festival PULSE, accompanied by Eliasson’s immersive real-time light installation – will stream worldwide on STAGE+ from 18 July.

Other forthcoming highlights include Bach, Beethoven and Schubert recitals at the Edinburgh International Festival (22 August) and three at London’s Wigmore Hall (10-12 September); a European tour of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5 with the Concertgebouw Orchestra and Santtu-Matias Rouvali taking in the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Lucerne Festival, Grafenegg Festival and Philharmonie de Paris (26 August-3 September); the world premiere of Mark Simpson’s Piano Concerto with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Edward Gardner at London’s Royal Festival Hall (23 October); a recital tour of South Korea, China and Taiwan in October and November, as well as Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Berliner Philharmoniker and Kirill Petrenko in Baden-Baden (4 December).

Vikingur Olafsson, piano

Please Note: We have deliberately chosen not to offer this album at 192 kHz. Our analysis of the frequency spectrum has clearly shown that the signal content does not justify such a high sampling rate. We are therefore making the album available at 96 kHz.

Víkingur Ólafsson
Possessing a rare combination of passionate musicality, explosive virtuosity and intellectual curiosity, Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson has won all the major prizes in his native country, including four Musician of the Year prizes at the Icelandic Music Awards as well as The Icelandic Optimism Prize.

Víkingur’s 2016/17 season includes performances with NDR Elbphilhamonie Orchester and Los Angeles Philharmonic under Esa-Pekka Salonen, tour with Orkester Norden (Lawrence Foster) and concerts with Iceland Symphony Orchestra (Yan Pascal Tortelier) and MDR Sinfonieorchester (Kristjan Järvi). Since February 2016 he has taken over from Martin Fröst as Artistic Director of Vinterfest in Sweden while continuing in the same role for the award winning Reykjavík Midsummer Music, which he founded in 2012. In recital he will make his debut at Wiener Konzerthaus, Konzerthaus Berlin, Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Louisiana Museum for Modern Art Denmark, La Folle Journée Festival as well in Leipzig and at the Istanbul Music Festival.

Víkingur signed an exclusive agreement with Deutsche Grammophon in November 2016. His debut album for DG will feature the piano works of Philip Glass and is set to be released in time for the composer’s 80th birthday in January 2017. In 2015 Víkingur recorded solo works by Igor Stravinsky for the company’s complete works edition of the composer and before that, he released 3 albums on his own label, Dirrindí Music. The first two were solo discs; ‘Debut’, (showing “exceptional perception and depth of maturity,” said EPTA Journal) and ‘Chopin-Bach’ (prompting Piano News Magazine to say “Immense talent … you must listen to this young pianist!”). His third album was a double CD/DVD release of ‘Winterreise’ with bass Kristinn Sigmundsson, which won the Album of the Year award at the Icelandic Music Awards 2012.

Víkingur has premiered five piano concertos to date and worked with composers including Philip Glass, Mark Simpson and Daníel Bjarnason. He has collaborated with leading artists from diverse fields, such as Roman Signer, Lillevan and Yann Malka, and appeared at festivals such as Busoni and Transart (Bolzano), MITO SettembreMusica (Milano) and Nordic Cool (Washington DC). When it comes to his relationships with other musicians, Víkingur has worked with Sayaka Shoji, István Várdai, Martin Fröst, Pekka Kuusisto and Björk.

Away from the concert stage, Víkingur is the driving force behind numerous innovative musical projects. Most recently the classical music television series, Útúrdúr (Out-of-tune), produced for the Icelandic National Broadcasting Service in 2013-14, was broadcast to unanimous critical and public acclaim.

Víkingur grew up in Iceland where he studied with Erla Stefánsdóttir and Peter Máté. He holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from The Juilliard School, where he studied with Jerome Lowenthal and Robert McDonald.

This album contains no booklet.