• After meeting the composer György Kurtág (b.1926) last year, the Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson devised his new album From Afar (Deutsche Grammophon): a form of musical map linking Kurtág’s crystalline miniatures (from Játékok) with Bach, Bartók, Brahms, Mozart, Schumann and Thomas Adès, as well as traditional Icelandic and Hungarian folk songs. Some of these short pieces are in Ólafsson’s own transcriptions. Many link to memories of the pianist’s childhood. The mood is characteristically intimate, introverted, contemplative – demanding close listening, even though the pieces are often familiar.
