Recording of the Week, Víkingur Ólafsson performs piano music by Debussy and Rameau

It's a funny thing, being required by the current Coronavirus pandemic to stay at home all day. Quite often the self-discipline and focus that such enforced confinement engenders can lead to great things: as many people have pointed out on Twitter and other places, Newton and Shakespeare kept themselves occupied during quarantine by respectively inventing calculus and writing King Lear.

Similarly, it was in March last year, whilst sitting around waiting for the birth of his (overdue) child, that Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson decided to while away the hours by playing through the complete keyboard works of Rameau. As he was beavering away, he kept being reminded of the music of Debussy, and so the seed for his third album on Deutsche Grammophon was born, pairing music by the two composers.

I remain an enormous fan of Víkingur's previous albums of Philip Glass and Bach, so I'll go right ahead and tip my hand early: I think this may be his finest recording yet. Apart from the sheer virtuosity on display, what impresses me most is the variety of tone and touch that he applies, in particular his ability to layer dynamics so that he can bring out one voice whilst keeping everything else at a lower volume. This enables him to impart a sense of line and phrasing to pieces like Jardins sous la pluie and the two extracts from Children's Corner (Serenade of the Doll and The Snow is Dancing) that is a joy to listen to.

The virtuosity I mentioned is amply demonstrated in many of the Rameau works, with immaculate, beautifully-ornamented passagework in pieces such as Le Rappel des Oiseaux, La Rameau, and Les Tourbillons, and just the right amount of stylish, wry humour in the best-known Rameau piece on the album, La Poule, where Víkingur evokes the pecking of the eponymous hen delightfully without taking away from the integrity of the piece.

For me, though, the highlights are, to put it simply, the beginning, the middle, and the end! Supporting the aforementioned delicate miniatures are a trio of more substantial pieces that form the album's backbone. It kicks off with an enchanting account of the Prélude from Debussy's cantata, La Damoiselle élue, in the composer's own arrangement (albeit slightly modified by Víkingur at the end) for solo piano. The way he voices the chords and brings out individual lines with crystal clarity is sublimely evocative.

If you happen to have read the interview I did with Víkingur recently, I hope you'll have noticed the incredible amount of thought and intelligence that went into every aspect of this album, from the choice and ordering of pieces to the overall concept itself. Conceived very much like a theatrical experience in two "acts", the start of the "second half" is Víkingur's own arrangement of the Act IV Entrée from Rameau's final opera, Les Boréades, a beautiful composition to begin with, but one which in Víkingur's hands attains a transcendent radiance, sounding almost like Massenet or something much more recent.

Finally, the album ends in the most fitting way possible, with Debussy's Hommage à Rameau from Book One of Images. It's a stunningly hypnotic account that, even in the louder, more impassioned moments, always retains a refinement and grace that is extremely beguiling. I've lost count of the number of times I've listened to this album over the past few weeks, and yet it hasn't forfeited an ounce of its magic. If anything it keeps revealing more secrets and depths each time, and has been a perfect listening companion in recent days as I while away the hours in the confines of my home.