Víkingur Ólafsson

The Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson serves as curator of Lucerne Festival Pulse from 2026 to 2028. Born in 1984 in Reykjavík, he studied in Iceland with Erla Stefánsdóttir and Péter Máté before continuing his training at the Juilliard School in New York with Robert McDonald and Jerome Lowenthal. From the outset of his career, Ólafsson has worked closely with contemporary composers, including Philip Glass, a selection of whose piano works he recorded in 2017. This release launched his ongoing collaboration with Deutsche Grammophon, for which he has since released several Bach recordings, along with a Debussy-Rameau album, the project Mozart & Contemporaries, and From Afar. His interpretation of Bach’s Goldberg Variations was awarded the Opus Klassik in 2024 and a Grammy Award in 2025. His most recent release, Opus 109, juxtaposes Beethoven’s Piano Sonata Op. 109 with works by Bach and Schubert. Among the orchestras with which Víkingur Ólafsson has collaborated are the San Francisco Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and the Czech Philharmonic. He opened the 2025-26 season with the Philharmonia Orchestra in London and subsequently toured the United States with the ensemble. He also appeared this season with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in John Adams’s After the Fall, a piano concerto written for him, which the composer himself conducted. He also took part in the festivities honoring György Kurtág on the occasion of his 100th birthday at Budapest’s MüPa. Near the end of May 2026, Ólafsson will return to the Berliner Philharmoniker to perform Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto. He has received the Rolf Schock Prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts as well as the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Gold Medal. He has additionally been awarded Iceland’s highest honor, the Order of the Falcon, as well as the Icelandic Export Award and the Nordic Council Music Prize; he was named Artist of the Year by Gramophone in 2019 and by Musical America in 2025.

Lucerne Festival debut on 23 November 2019 with a recital that encompassed works by Bach and Beethoven.

February 2026