Víkingur Ólafsson – Mozart: Ave verum corpus, K. 618 (Transcr. Liszt for Solo Piano)

Listen to Víkingur Ólafsson’s new album ’Mozart & Contemporaries’: On this new album Ólafsson presents some of his favourite Mozart keyboard works in the company of pieces by a selection of the composer’s contemporaries. These contemporaries included Bach, Haydn, Galuppi and Domenico Cimarosa, the composer of this particular track. “Perhaps all four provide a chance to calibrate the contemporary ear towards the prevailing ideas, styles and tastes of the times”, comments Ólafsson. “It is my hope that this particular context, a mix of the celebrated and the obscure, can slightly alter our psychological attunement, removing some of the baggage we all bring with us to Mozart’s music. This is in any case what I set out to do for myself: to approach even the best-known works of Mozart with the same freedom and childlike enthusiasm I felt upon discovering the rare and staggeringly lyrical works from the likes of Galuppi and C