Presto Recording of the Week
3rd September 2021

Gramophone Magazine
October 2021
Editor's Choice

Víkingur Ólafsson (piano)

Galuppi: Piano Sonata in F minor: Andante spiritoso
Mozart: Rondo in F major K494
Bach, C P E: Rondo in D minor, Wq. 61 / 4 (H290)
Cimarosa: Keyboard Sonata No. 42 in D minor
Mozart: Fantasia in D minor, K397
Mozart: Rondo in D major, K485
Cimarosa: Keyboard Sonata No. 55 in A minor
Haydn: Piano Sonata No. 47 in B minor, Hob.XVI:32
Mozart: Gigue in G Major, K574
Mozart: Piano Sonata No. 16 in C major, K545 'Facile'
Mozart: String Quintet No. 4 in G minor, K516: IV. Adagio
Galuppi: Sonata in C minor, Illy 34
Mozart: Piano Sonata No. 14 in C minor, K457
Mozart: Adagio in B minor, K540
Mozart: Ave verum corpus, K618

Víkingur Ólafsson’s thought-provoking programme for Mozart & Contemporaries features some of his favourite Mozart keyboard works juxtaposed with pieces by a selection of the composer’s leading contemporaries: Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714–1788); Joseph Haydn (1732–1809); Baldassare Galuppi (1706–1785); and Domenico Cimarosa (1749–1801).

“Far from the glowing image of the angelic prodigy, the music on this album is mostly by the Mozart of the 1780s, a grown man and a mature composer – who in the preceding years had come to know adversity,” explained Víkingur Ólafsson. “This is the period when Mozart was not just perfecting the Classical tradition but subtly subverting it, his graceful touch as featherlight as always but the shadows darker, the nuances and ambiguities more profound.”

"Just when you feel you’ve got the measure of Víkingur Ólafsson he veers off in an unexpected direction...this could have been a bitty affair, yet the result is anything but." - Gramophone Magazine, October 2021.