Víkingur Ólafsson, piano

PROGRAMME

Johann Sebastian Bach: Goldberg Variations, BWV 988

The Goldberg Variations are one of the crowning works of the variation genre. Variations are one of the primordial forms of music based on repetition, a mechanism that makes it understandable and recognisable to the human ear. According to his first biographer, Bach wrote them for one of his best pupils, Johann Gottlieb Goldberg, to play to Count Hermann Karl von Keyserling to help him wile away his sleepless nights. The popular Icelandic piano player Víkingur Ólafsson takes on this monument of piano literature, a mountain that demands not only technique and interpretative power, but also absolute control in order to reach the summit.