J. S. Bach
Prelude in E major, BWV 854 (Das Wohltemperierte Klavier, Book I)

Beethoven
Piano Sonata in E minor, Op. 90
I. Mit Lebhaftigkeit und durchaus mit Empfindung und Ausdruck
II. Nicht zu geschwind und sehr singbar vorgetragen

J. S. Bach
Partita No. 6 in E minor, BWV 830
1. Toccata
2. Allemanda
3. Corrente
4. Air
5. Sarabande
6. Tempo di Gavotta
7. Gigue

Schubert
Piano Sonata in E minor, D. 566
1. Moderato
2. Allegretto

Beethoven
Piano Sonata No. 30 in E major, Op. 109
1. Vivace ma non troppo – Adagio espressivo
2. Prestissimo
3. Gesangvoll, mit innigster Empfindung

Víkingur Ólafsson is a unique and visionary musician who brings his profound originality to some of the greatest works in music history. His recordings, including the 2025 GRAMMY-winning Bach’s Goldberg Variations, have garnered over a billion streams and multiple top awards, such as BBC Music Magazine Album of the Year and two Opus Klassik Solo Recording of the Year honours. He has also received the Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medal, Rolf Schock Music Prize, and Iceland’s Order of the Falcon. November 2025 brings his new album, Opus 109, which places Beethoven’s Sonata No. 30 in dialogue with Schubert, Bach, and other works by Beethoven. Ólafsson tours this programme across leading venues in Europe and North America. In the 2025-26 season he also visits the US with Philharmonia Orchestra, returns to the Berlin and Czech Philharmonics, performs John Adams’ After the Fall with the LA Philharmonic, honours the Kurtág centenary, and holds residencies in Berkeley and Budapest.

The Icelandic pianist is fond of structuring his albums and concerts around a single idea or concept, allowing the different pieces – and the worlds of the various composers – to reflect on and interact with each other. Tonight’s programme will prove no exception, as we listen to a succession of works in both E major and E minor, revealing the moods these two keys evoked in composers of different eras and temperaments. And what does E mean for Víkingur Ólafsson? “Having synaesthesia may play some role here. For instance, I perceive the pitch of E as green in colour, so works in both E major and E minor evoke different hues of green, ranging from dark and lush to bright and vibrant.”

© Ari Magg

Johann Sebastian Bach devoted special attention to his Six Partitas: the suites were the first bits of music that he published in print (1731) for the purpose of distribution and ‘self-promotion’. In them, he committed to parchment all of the ideas he had about keyboard music at the time, incorporating a wide range of playing techniques in order to place a figurative calling card on the imaginary table of the musical world of his era. Exceptionally long at 30 minutes from start to finish, the Partita No. 6 in E minor takes on an overall tone of resignation due to its key. It reaches its most profound point in the lamentation and sharp dissonances of the Sarabande movement, while the main theme of the final movement, with its avant-garde sound, has much to teach even listeners of our own time.

As for the two E-minor sonatas, Ludwig van Beethoven’s No. 27, Op. 90, written in 1814, and Franz Schubert’s fragmentary work dating from three years later (of which only the two first movements will be played) share several features. Both contrast the keys of E major and E minor, their first movements being quite complex and dramatic, the second – to such a degree that both could even be classified within the genre of ‘songs without words’ later elucidated by Mendelssohn – more melodic. Beethoven’s Sonata No. 30 in E major (Op. 109), composed in 1820, is notable for the heavenly tranquillity of its final movement, which the composer instructed should be performed “singing, with the most heartfelt emotion”. The theme undergoes various marvellous transformations over the course of six variations, only to return to its essential simplicity at its close.