Víkingur Ólafsson’s thought-provoking programme for Mozart & Contemporaries features some of his favourite Mozart keyboard works juxtaposed with pieces by a selection of the composer’s leading contemporaries: Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714–1788); Joseph Haydn (1732–1809); Baldassare Galuppi (1706–1785); and Domenico Cimarosa (1749–1801).

“Far from the glowing image of the angelic prodigy, the music on this album is mostly by the Mozart of the 1780s, a grown man and a mature composer – who in the preceding years had come to know adversity,” explained Víkingur Ólafsson. “This is the period when Mozart was not just perfecting the Classical tradition but subtly subverting it, his graceful touch as featherlight as always but the shadows darker, the nuances and ambiguities more profound.”