“Curiosity in music and in life is something that you have to strive for,” Víkingur Ólafsson tells Apple Music Classical. Since 2011, the Icelandic pianist has spent much of his recording career being curious about the music of J.S. Bach. Continuum II is the next step on that lifelong journey of discovery and self-improvement. In just 40 minutes, the album traverses a huge range of Bach’s music, from short but inventive keyboard preludes and exquisitely harmonized chorales to arrangements for piano of majestic organ works, concertos, and sonatas. “I feel like Bach helps me to understand so many of the composers who came later,” says Ólafsson, “because they are all a part of that continuum, that river that his music has become.” But, adds Ólafsson, Bach is also a great teacher—the composer that many musicians turn to for self-analysis and criticism. “Since I finished my studies, many years ago, I haven’t had a piano lesson with a person,” he says, “but I have had piano lessons with Johann Sebastian Bach and have used his music to try to understand my weaknesses and strengths. When you record Bach, he reveals everything.” Recording in his home studio in Iceland (“you can get the purest sound in the world from a studio like this”), Ólafsson employs grand and upright pianos, and strings—three different sound worlds—to take us on his latest Bach journey. Works are not grouped by type, but rather placed to create an unpredictable yet compelling musical narrative. We begin, for instance, with Bach’s take on Vivaldi, delicately played on an upright piano whose bell-like tones contrast with the more incisive grand piano in performances of two preludes. Ólafsson’s new arrangement of the Air on a G String then precedes two chorales, before one of the album’s central works, “Erbarm dich mein, o Herre Gott,” an early Bach organ chorale prelude. “I’m trying to create a composition from my albums,” says Ólafsson, “something that people hopefully don’t want to break in the middle. I could have had a lot more things on the album, but I chose not to release them because I was looking for the balance of narrative. I want my audience to be with me from the first piece to the last.” Here, Víkingur Ólafsson takes us through a selection of his favorite pieces from Continuum II. Keyboard Concerto No. 1 in D Major, BWV 972 (After Vivaldi, RV 230): II. Larghetto “This piece shows a side of Bach that I love—as the arranger of the music of others. It warms my heart that even history’s greatest composer also had to arrange the music of others to understand and learn something new. What he does here with Vivaldi concerto is incredible. I play it on an upright piano and I imagined a bit of a mandolin sonority, so I had great fun with that. I couldn’t wish for a more inviting opener than this.” Chorales (Tracks 5, 6, 14-17) “You have the whole future of music in some of those chorales. Bach took the melodies of other people and simply harmonized them, but when you try your hand at it yourself, you understand what a high level he was working at. It seems so easy to write a chorale, and I can write a chorale in, like, five minutes. But to do what Bach has done with the kind of surprises and inner voices and everything, it’s just a miracle.” Erbarm dich mein, o Herre Gott, BWV 721 “This is one of the most beautiful things that Bach ever wrote, but I discovered it while recording the album—my producer actually pointed it out to me, I didn’t know it. It’s an organ prelude that he wrote when he was about 20 years old, so I think it might be Bach at his youngest on the whole album, but it sounds almost like Schumann—it’s glorious. I recorded it on the upright piano because I wanted it to be as fragile and intimate as possible.” Air on the G String “There are pieces on this album that are incredibly well known, like the ‘Air’ from the Orchestral Suite No. 3, but I wanted to discover it for myself on the piano. I was shocked when I started looking around for a great transcription of the ‘Air,’ and I thought they were all awful—I thought they all absolutely missed the point of the music. So, I had no choice but to do my own.”