Víkingur Ólafsson is among the most creative and pioneering classical musicians today, known for his creative programming and innovative projects. One of the more recent ones is the solo album Mozart & Contemporaries on which Mozart is accompanied by Joseph Haydn and Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach as well as Italian composers such as Baldassare Galuppi and Domenico Cimarosa.

When Ólafsson interprets music from the Mozart album at Berwaldhallen, the concert opens with music by the Venetian composer Galuppi, much acclaimed during his lifetime, especially on account of his operas, but now almost forgotten. Ólafsson has been fascinated by Galuppi since he came upon a video with his piano music, interpreted by the legendary pianist Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli. Ólafsson has compared Galuppi’s ninth sonata to Mozart’s Symphony No. 40, which has the same “combination of dark, polished elegance and restless energy that is so hard to capture”.

We will also hear Ólafsson in music by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, the son of the better-known Johann Sebastian. Mozart was very much influenced by him and referred to him when he said that “Bach is the father, we are his children”. Ólafsson has described J. S. Bach’s Rondo in D Minor as “irresistible”: “His approach to composition is completely atypical for his time … like Beethoven with a touch of Stravinsky.”

In this concert, however, Mozart is the protagonist. Ólafsson became fascinated by his piano sonatas when he was as young as eight years old. The renowned pianist Arthur Schnabel has described them as “too easy for children and too difficult for musicians”. The works we will hear were composed in the productive 1780s. Mozart had high hopes when he moved to Vienna in 1781 where he made himself a name as a composer and supremely gifted pianist with a talent for spell-binding the audience – a gift that very much applies to Víkingur Ólafsson too.

Text: Axel Lindhe