The Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson is one of the most sought-after artists working today. He inspires the public and the press alike with his profound musicality and his visionary programming. His interest in contemporary music has led to numerous collaborations with Icelandic and international composers, among them Philip Glass, whose piano works he recorded on CD in 2017, and John Adams, whose piano concerto After the Fall, written for him, he premiered in January 2025 with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra.
In 2024/25 he was artist in residence at the Tonhalle in Zurich and with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, and also artist in focus at the Vienna Musikverein.
Other highlights have included performances with the New York and Berlin Philharmonics, European tours with the Cleveland Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the Tonhalle Orchestra, Zurich, and concerts with Yuja Wang. He has also toured Europe and the USA with recitals of Beethoven’s last three piano sonatas. His season culminates in the summer with his debut at the Salzburg Festival.
In a groundbreaking move, he dedicated the entire 2023/24 season to one work only, which he performed worldwide 88 times: Bach’s Goldberg Variations.
Víkingur Ólafsson performs with orchestras such as the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, the Czech Philharmonic, the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, and is a regular guest at international festivals such as the Lucerne Festival and the BBC Proms.
His recordings for Deutsche Grammophon have been awarded numerous prizes, among them two OPUS Klassiks, the BBC Music Magazine Award and the Gramophone Classical Music Award. Most recently, in January 2025, he received a Grammy for his recording of the Goldberg Variations.
In 2022 he received the Rolf Schock Prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts and the Icelandic Export Award, followed in 2023 by the Nordic Person of the Year Award. He has also received the Order of the Falcon, Iceland’s highest order of merit, which was awarded to him by the President of Iceland.
