Two extra-special stops on Víkingur Ólafsson's Goldberg Variations tour
From a Carnegie Hall debut to a Valentine's Day 40th birthday party at Harpa, Reykjavík, in just six nights

Give Víkingur Ólafsson another minute, and "Goldberg" will be his middle name. After a quarter century, a dream keeps coming true.

Having taken a first bow or two after his February 7 Carnegie Hall debut with J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations, Víkingur Ólafsson returned to the stage, produced a mic from his sleeve like a bunny from a hat, and directed the capacity crowd on its feet not to sit down.

"I'm not a pastor," the Icelandic piano phenomenon of the 600 million career streams explained, eyes twinkling behind owlish glasses.

There would be no encore, he told us; Bach's reprise of the opening aria after those stupendous 30 variations constitutes its own built-in encore. After that, what could possibly follow? Only Variation 1, and then where would we be? The loop would go on forever.

With that, the artist patted the Steinway, thanked New York (his "second home"), gave a shout-out to the gallery (where as a Juilliard student he would attend three concerts a week at ten dollars a pop), skipped into the wings (yes, skipped), and off we shuffled into the night.

Give Ólafsson another minute, and "Goldberg" will be his middle name. For a quarter of a century, he's been dreaming of recording what he calls the greatest keyboard masterpiece of all time. With the release of his latest album, in October, that dream came true. Now he's well on his way to fulfilling another one as he dedicates his entire current season to a six-continent tour of the Goldbergs. In many cities, he's booked for multiple dates.

It only looks like colliding icebergs: Harpa, the harborside concert hall of Reykjavík.

At the Sala São Paolo, in Brazil, his calendar lists four iterations; at the Sydney Opera House, five. And the week after the Carnegie Hall debut, Ólafsson gave three concerts in his native Reykjavík, Iceland's cosmopolitan but tiny capital of about 125,000. The venue: the cultural and convention center called Harpa, an architectural marvel inaugurated in 2011, composed of crystal blocks that loom over the harbor like an errant iceberg, housing an auditorium that alludes in design to the rugged lava fields and living magma of the island nation's volcanos.

The first in the series, on February 14, happened to coincide with the artist's 40th birthday. A dozen cameras, give or take, were in place to capture the event for Deutsche Grammophon's streaming platform Stage+, marking its first live broadcast in Dolby Atmos. After the artist's don't-sit-down riff and skipping exit, the audience erupted in song with a heartfelt "Happy Birthday." That brought him back one last time, beaming. In his impeccable dark suit, standing tall and lanky, with the pushed-back mane of a lion, he might have passed (if not for a pastor) for A Little Night Music's divinity student Henrik Egerman, minus the cello and the identity crisis: half Bergman, half GQ, and a pinch of pixie dust.

So many news hooks! So much personable charisma! And what about the music? Beginning intimately, cresting in ecstasy, the Carnegie Hall performance was bliss, and the same was even truer in Reykjavík.

*

"In my beginning is my end." The reprise of the aria Ólafsson spoke of gives the Goldberg Variations a self-evident, self-contained "circular" unity. The virtually unvarying key signature of G major is an indication of granitic stability; just three variations in the parallel minor break the pattern, and the first of those doesn't appear until halfway through the set. And the series of canons that climb stepwise from the unison to the octave and (redundantly?) on to the ninth—one such after every two free variations—suggests a rigorous master plan. For Glenn Gould in his landmark first recording of 1955 (released the following year), exposing that architecture was the quintessence of the exercise, and to focus on it, he systematically omitted Bach's ubiquitous repeats.

If not a pastor, perhaps a divinity student? Ólafsson takes his leave without an encore.

For Ólafsson, the deeper fascination of the Goldberg Variations lies in its limitless improvisatory caprice. Time signatures vary constantly, as do mood, character, and the density of the counterpoint, which interleaves as many as five melodic lines at once. Like Gould, Ólafsson prefers the modern concert grand over an historic instrument for its enhanced palette, responsiveness, and dynamic range. Unlike Gould, he puts those advantages to use as he spontaneously embellishes all those repeats.

At Carnegie Hall and at the first concert of the Harpa series, Ólafsson's performances felt very much of a piece with the recording. From start to finish, the finger work was magical in its articulation—the very definition of prestidigitation. Yet the effect never turned mechanical, skeletal, or dry. Though Ólafsson seldom (if ever) lingered on the sustain pedal, he tapped it nonstop, tempering sharp edges with a wizard's touch.

Mindful, perhaps, that the Goldberg Variations were commissioned by an insomniac seeking to fill lonely night hours with musical distractions, Ólafsson eased into the aria in soft-edged candle-lit tones. But with the Variation 1, we were in another country; Ólafsson dispatched it presto, with buoyant elasticity, fusing constellations of melody from lacy pinpricks of staccato.

Soon he was cruising off all over the map, in who knew what direction would come next. Tempests of counterpoint too fast and furious for the ear to follow coalesced into great billows of sound. Lightly struck, widely spaced single notes in the base line pinned diaphanous washes of harmony neatly in place. Against pronouncements of Lutheran severity, one episode darted along like harlequins chasing their tails in an opera buffa. The 16th variation, an overture in the dotted French style, invoked new beginnings with a courtly flourish. Chains of trills layered upon trills anticipated Beethoven. Yet such was the clarity of poetic intention moment to moment that the blitz never went helter-shelter.

Where exactly Ólafsson caught the current that would carry him back to harbor, however, was all but impossible to pinpoint. The transition was seamless—at a guess it came in the course of the extraordinary 25th variation, which at ten minutes runs twice the length of the second-longest and ten times as long as three of the shortest.

This "black pearl" andante of the series is the last one written in the minor. Spiked with chromaticisms and half-step progressions, it emerges in some interpretations as all but Gothic, morbid, and histrionic. Under Ólafsson's fingers it was brooding, introspective. From this still point in a turning world, the music surged forward, variation tagging variation without so much as a breath between, culminating in the jubilation of the Quodlibet, pealing like bells of a thousand church towers

In Reykjavík it struck me, as it had not before, that Ólafsson was subtly shading the dynamics as winds carried to every point of the compass, now nearer, now farther away. The man's imagination is as singular as his technique. He's not in the business of repeating himself.