“For This Pianist, Every Album Is an Essay” - The New York Times, March 2020

“… the programming here is truly inspired … The highlights are many … he makes the most well-known pieces his own” - Gramophone, April 2020

27 MARCH 2020 (TORONTO, ON) - After the remarkable global success of his award-winning J.S. Bach recording, celebrated Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson returns with his third solo album. Debussy · Rameau, release today by Deutsche Grammophon/Universal Music Canada, the country's leading music company, juxtaposes pieces by two of the greatest French composers – both musical revolutionaries – exploring the contrasts and common ground between them. The innovative new recording follows Ólafsson’s extraordinary albums Philip Glass Piano Works and Johann Sebastian Bach.

New video for Rameau’s Les Tendres Plaintes now available HERE

“This album is set up as a dialogue between two of my favourite composers, Jean-Philippe Rameau and Claude Debussy. I see them as musical brothers, kindred spirits even though one was 180 years older than the other. They were musicians of the future, who loved to stir things up. They were two uniquely gifted keyboard composers, two progressive and fiercely original musical thinkers who could capture incredibly evocative images through sound. I want to show Rameau as a futurist and I want to emphasise Debussy’s deep roots in the French baroque – and in Rameau’s music in particular. The idea is that the listener almost forgets who is who, while listening to the album.” – Víkingur Ólafsson on Debussy · Rameau

Also released today is a video to accompany Rameau’s Les Tendres Plaintes, a gem from the Pièces de clavecin. This follows on from the videos for The Arts and the Hours – an interlude from Rameau’s opera Les Boréades transcribed by the artist for modern piano and captured in an atmospheric short film he made with director Magnús Leifsson – and Debussy’s La Fille aux Cheveux de Lin.

At 3pm (CET) tomorrow, as part of World Piano Day, Ólafsson will appear in DG’s virtual concert hall on Facebook and DG YouTube to talk about the journey of musical discovery involved in making the album and perform works by both composers. Viewers will be able to access the live stream via the hashtags #StayAtHome and #WorldPianoDay.

Víkingur Ólafsson: “As extraordinary innovators of both harmony and form, with a unique ear for colour and a keen sense of the theatrical, both Rameau and Debussy wrote music which engages more senses than just that of hearing.”