There is something boldly, winningly audacious about Víkingur Ólafsson’s decision to deliver two versions of the same recital – one played on a Steinway Grand, the other on a parlour-room upright piano – in the one release. Especially as From Afar proves to be a masterly, meticulously programmed and played autobiographical meditation pivoting around the always imaginative Icelandic pianist’s homage to György Kurtág after a felicitous meeting in late 2021 with the then 96-year-old composer.

Ólafsson’s awareness of the Hungarian master he hymns here dates back to a childhood recommendation from his architect-composer father of Kurtág’s song-cycle for soprano and violin, Kafka Fragments, one that “opened up to me a world of intense, ultra-specific expression – part music, part poetry, part primordial gesture”.
Those qualities inform this wonderfully wide-ranging compendium of miniatures by Bach, Mozart, Schumann, Brahms and Bartók, alongside Icelandic and Hungarian folk songs, a world premiere by Thomas Adès, three transcriptions by Ólafsson, and “interconnecting” pieces by Kurtág.

Cumulatively they amount to something of a self-portrait, as considered as Ólafsson’s...