• 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.
The sonic novelty of this double album is that the same programme is recorded twice, once on a grand piano, once on an upright: a reminder of the instruments Ólafsson played as a child. Few artists would be allowed such an experiment, but this pianist, now at the top of his game, has earned the privilege. The timbres are subtly different, though whether you think it’s a gimmick or a justifiable comparison will depend on your ears, or maybe the quality of your earphones. In additional homage to Kurtág and his pianist wife and co-performer, Márta Kurtág, Olafsson’s pianist wife, Halla Oddný Magnúsdóttir, makes a discreet appearance.
• The New York-based composer Caroline Shaw (b.1982) describes her new album Evergreen (Nonesuch), her second with Attacca Quartet, as “like walking through the forest floor from an ant’s perspective, looking up at the surrounding moss, water, and wood in all its patient, nourishing, strange complexity”. This may seem fanciful, but Shaw’s haunting, energetic music has a vigorous quality, and the composer’s words are a lively guide to listening.
A violinist herself, she writes idiomatically for string quartet forces, relishing existing techniques – there’s plenty of pizzicato here – but pushing these textures to new limits, the music always lyrical. Three Essays (2018) explores ideas of language and the written word, including the work of Marilynne Robinson. Shaw sings too, her exquisite setting of the French poem to the dawn, Cant voi l’aube, and the baroque-like And So standouts on an album to listen to on repeat.
• All this month, Radio 3 is celebrating the 150th anniversary of the birth of Ralph Vaughan Williams. Tomorrow’s Sunday Feature: Such Stuff As Dreams Are Made On explores the Sixth Symphony (6.45pm); Drama on 3: People Everywhere Will Sing examines his later life and reputation (7.30pm); Lunchtime Concerts from the Oxford Lieder festival set his music in context (Tuesday to Friday, 1pm).
