12. Víkingur ÓlafssonJohann Sebastian Bach
It’s a relatively new record, I think it’s about two or three years old. He’s a wonderful, legendary Icelandic pianist. [None of the Bach pieces] were written for piano, because there was no piano then. Apparently he has a ‘volcanic temperament’, whatever that means in Iceland. Maybe it’s just cheap journalism! But what’s amazing for me is that for me, it presents the music that I’ve been listening to my whole life in such a way that he’s not there any longer. It seems completely without ego, completely without technique, completely without any kind of virtuosity. He’s an incredible musician obviously, an incredible player. But it’s all gone, and the notes just hang there.
There’s another pianist called Jonathan Biss, who I recently discovered. I heard him play Beethoven and it was a very similar experience I had. I’m projecting this. I don’t know the gentleman. But for me when Jonathan plays Beethoven, it sounds like he’s not there. He’s just saying, ‘Here are the works of the master. Please enjoy. Please go deeper.’ These are modern piano recordings on Deutsche Grammophon. It’s a beautiful, beautiful recording of the piano. I’ve been recording the piano my whole life, I’ve done a lot of piano recording with Yann Tiersen in the last few years. We work very hard to find our own colors, and we listen to all the other ways pianos have been recorded over the last hundred years. But that’s what it is for me.
Again, it ties back to Robert Wyatt’s genius and Steve Reich’s minimal genius. It’s an extraordinary accomplishment. [Ólafsson] erased himself from the picture. Again, it’s part of what we try to do with Nous Alpha through our meditative practices, and through our whole life together and our lifestyle, it’s to lay the ego aside, leave the ego at the door somehow, and let spirit speak through. It seems to me that Mr. Ólafsson is doing that at an absolutely exemplary level when he plays. He plays other stuff, he’s just done a record of Debussy and Ravel, which is beautiful as well. A genius modern pianist.
