{"id":29381,"date":"2021-07-08T13:39:51","date_gmt":"2021-07-08T03:39:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/soundslikesydney.com.au\/?p=29381"},"modified":"2021-07-08T13:39:51","modified_gmt":"2021-07-08T03:39:51","slug":"vikingur-olafsson-releases-mozart-contemporaries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/soundslikesydney.com.au\/?p=29381","title":{"rendered":"V\u00edkingur \u00d3lafsson Releases Mozart & Contemporaries"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In his latest album Mozart & Contemporaries<\/em>, Icelandic pianist V\u00edkingur \u00d3lafsson presents some of his favourite Mozart keyboard works in the company of pieces by a selection of the composer\u2019s leading contemporaries. Juxtaposing works by Mozart, Haydn and C.P.E. Bach with rarely-recorded Galuppi and Cimarosa, Mozart & Contemporaries<\/em> dispels the image of Mozart as the angelic and prodigious idiot savant, instead presenting a mature composer through music primarily dating from the 1780s: a resourceful, hard-working adult who had come to know adversity. All is artfully brought together by \u00d3lafsson\u2019s signature thought-provoking programming.<\/p>\n

V\u00edkingur \u00d3lafsson\u2019s recordings of Philip Glass \u00b7 Piano Works, Johann Sebastian Bach, and Debussy \u00b7 Rameau, achieved global success with 225 million career streams and 320K albums sold. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00d3lafsson comments: \u201cI find this decade of Mozart\u2019s life and art endlessly fascinating. Mozart was not just a composer, and I feel that when he was writing for himself as a virtuoso pianist he indulged more than ever in the sublime playfulness that lay at the core of his originality and inventiveness. This is the period when Mozart was not just perfecting the Classical tradition but subtly subverting it\u2026 the shadows are darker, the nuances and ambiguities more profound.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714\u20131788); Joseph Haydn (1732\u20131809); Baldassare Galuppi (1706\u20131785); and Domenico Cimarosa (1749\u20131801): \u201cPerhaps all four provide a chance to calibrate the contemporary ear towards the prevailing ideas, styles and tastes of the times\u201d, comments \u00d3lafsson. \u201cIt is my hope that this particular context, a mix of the celebrated and the obscure, can slightly alter our psychological attunement, removing some of the baggage we all bring with us to Mozart\u2019s music. This is in any case what I set out to do for myself: to approach even the best-known works of Mozart with the same freedom and childlike enthusiasm I felt upon discovering the rare and staggeringly lyrical works from the likes of Galuppi and Cimarosa.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mozart & Contemporaries<\/em> provides a fascinating snapshot of a decade when changes were brewing, composers were experimenting, and Mozart was writing such visionary pieces as the Sonata in C minor K457<\/em>. The album \u2013 the pianist\u2019s fourth for Deutsche Grammophon \u2013 also includes \u00d3lafsson\u2019s own transcriptions: haunting arrangements of two sonatas by Cimarosa, plus a masterful solo piano transcription of the great Adagio in E flat major<\/em> from Mozart\u2019s String Quintet K516<\/em>. To conclude the album, Mozart\u2019s Adagio in B minor K540<\/em> quietly transitions into Franz Liszt\u2019s transcription of the motet Ave verum corpus<\/em>, composed in Mozart\u2019s final year. The vocal lines\u2019 ascension to the piano\u2019s higher registers is viewed by \u00d3lafsson as representing a final sense of death and transfiguration.<\/p>\n

\u00d3lafsson concludes, \u201cI feel like, when I play Mozart, that I get to know myself as a musician. I get to know sides that I didn\u2019t before. He seems to reflect your innermost core in music.\u201d<\/p>\n

First single out now \u2013 listen here<\/a><\/p>\n

Mozart: Piano Sonata No. 16 in C major, K 545 Sonata facile II. Andante<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>Watch the album trailer here<\/a><\/p>\n

Album available September 3, 2021<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In his latest album Mozart & Contemporaries, Icelandic pianist of V\u00edkingur \u00d3lafsson presents some of his favourite Mozart keyboard works in the company of pieces by a selection of the composer\u2019s leading contemporaries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29384,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"sls_format":[],"class_list":["post-29381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":{"deck":"","is_featured":false,"media_type":"standard","audio_embed":"","video_url":""},"yoast_head":"\nV\u00edkingur \u00d3lafsson Releases Mozart & Contemporaries - Sounds Like Sydney<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/soundslikesydney.com.au\/?p=29381\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"V\u00edkingur \u00d3lafsson Releases Mozart & Contemporaries - 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