Biography
Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson has captured the public and critical imagination to become one of the most sought-after artists of today. His recordings have led to over one billion streams and he has won numerous awards, including the 2025 GRAMMY Award® for Best Classical Instrumental Solo for his recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, BBC Music Magazine Album of the Year, and Opus Klassik Solo Recording of the Year (twice). Other notable honours include the Rolf Schock Music Prize, Gramophone’s Artist of the Year and Musical America’s Instrumentalist of the Year, as well as the Order of the Falcon (Iceland’s order of chivalry) and the Icelandic Export Award, given by the president of Iceland.
In a landmark move, Ólafsson devoted his entire 2023/24 season to a world tour of a single work – the Goldberg Variations – which he performed 90 times to great critical acclaim. Last season he was Artist-in-Residence with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic and Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, as well as Artist-in-Focus at the Vienna Musikverein. He toured Europe with the Cleveland Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra and Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, performed with the Berliner Philharmoniker at the BBC Proms and returned to the New York Philharmonic. He and Yuja Wang undertook a sell-out two-piano recital tour across Europe and North America and, in January 2025, he gave the world premiere with the San Francisco Symphony of John Adams’s After the Fall, a piano concerto written especially for him.
The 2025/26 season sees Ólafsson tour Europe and North America with his new recital programme, featuring Beethoven’s Sonata No. 30, Op. 109, and other works by Bach, Beethoven and Schubert. His recording of this repertoire is set for release on 21 November 2025. As the Philharmonia Orchestra’s Featured Artist he performs Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto, gives the UK premiere of After the Fall and celebrates György Kurtág at 100, as well as performing Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto and Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G with the orchestra at Carnegie Hall as part of its 80th-birthday celebrations. Other highlights include the Swedish premiere of After the Fall and US performances of both that work and Adams’s second concerto, Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes?.
9/2025