CELEBRATED ICELANDIC PIANIST VÍKINGUR ÓLAFSSON PRESENTS A THREE-PART SERIES EXPLORING THE ART OF MUSICAL TRANSCRIPTION
Víkingur Ólafsson explores the art of musical transcription in his own series Transcribe, Transform with Víkingur Ólafsson on BBC Radio 3 this autumn. Over three weeks (11, 18, 25 October) the Icelandic pianist explores how composers across the centuries have been reimagined in remarkably different and creative ways, showcasing the wealth of possibility represented by the transcription.
Ólafsson’s passion for re-examining music through the prism of a transcription underpins the new radio series, as he presents a wide variety of music from electronic re-workings of Debussy and composers’ transcribed sounds of the natural world, to a grand Baroque masterpiece transformed by a jazz quartet and a piano score given the rock ‘n’ roll treatment.
Approaching music without preconceptions; Ólafsson comments, “Every note we play anywhere, any time, is a reinterpretation, a transcription.”
The series runs on BBC Radio 3 at 11pm on 11, 18 and 25 October 2020. It follows on from Víkingur Ólafsson’s BBC Radio 4 Front Row’s artist residency earlier in 2020, when he broadcast live from an empty Harpa concert hall every Friday night for three months during lockdown.