Víkingur Ólafsson

Víkingur Ólafsson, a pianist from Iceland, first attracted notice across the wider classical landscape in the mid-2010s once he had collected several significant arts honors in his native country. Recognition has since expanded considerably on the strength of his inventive recital concepts and his interpretive command, which draws together works spanning the Baroque period and living composers. Orchestras on multiple continents engage him regularly, and his discography has earned repeated distinctions.

Initial training took place in Iceland; he later completed both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree at Juilliard, studying principally with Jerome Lowenthal and Robert McDonald. By 2017 he had given the first performances of five piano concertos, collaborating directly with composers that included Philip Glass, Daníel Bjarnason, and Haukur Tómasson, whose concerto he introduced in the 2016-2017 season. Joint projects have also linked him with visual artists such as Roman Signer and Lillevän as well as musicians including Sayaka Shoji, Pekka Kuusisto, and Björk.

His solo programs are constructed with deliberate attention to thematic, historical, tonal, or composite relationships among the chosen pieces. That same discernment led him to present the classical-music series Útúrdúr (“Out-of-tune”) on Icelandic National Broadcasting Service between 2013 and 2014 and to assume the artistic directorship of Vinterfest in 2016, succeeding the festival’s founder, Martin Fröst. He is likewise founder and artistic director of the Reykjavík Midsummer Music festival.

After issuing three recordings on his own label—one of them Schubert’s Winterreise with bass Kristinn Sigmundsson—he concluded an exclusive agreement with Deutsche Grammophon in November 2016. His debut release for the label, Philip Glass: Piano Works, appeared in January 2017. Later that year he served as featured pianist on Dario Marianelli’s score for the Academy Award-nominated film Darkest Hour, which portrays Winston Churchill. The 2018 album Johann Sebastian Bach received strong critical praise and brought numerous honors, among them Gramophone’s Artist of the Year. In 2019 he issued the companion set J.S. Bach: Works & Reworks, containing remixes of his Bach performances by artists such as Peter Gregson, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and Hans-Joachim Roedelius. The same year he gave the French premiere of the John Adams piano concerto Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes. During the first COVID-19 lockdown he transmitted live BBC programs from the empty Harpa concert hall in Reykjavík, attracting a still wider international following. His 2022-2023 season encompassed engagements throughout North America and Europe together with the release of From Afar, a collection of works he had played in his youth and additional selections, each recorded once on a concert grand and again on an upright piano.