Víkingur Ólafsson

The Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson enjoys a close association with Lucerne ­Festival: in the spring he began his three-year role as curator of the Pulse Festival. Born in 1984 in Reykjavík, he studied in his native Iceland and at the Juilliard School in New York. 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. That album 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 recording, Opus 109, juxtaposes Beethoven’s Piano Sonata Op. 109 with works by Bach and Schubert. Among the orchestras with which Ólafsson has collaborated are the San Francisco Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and the Czech Philharmonic. In the 2025-26 season he undertook a tour with the Philharmonia Orchestra across the United States. He also appeared with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in John Adams’s After the Fall, a piano concerto written for him, with the composer himself conducting. He additionally took part in the festivities honoring György Kurtág on the occasion of his 100th birthday at Budapest’s Müpa. In May 2026 he returned to the Berliner Philharmoniker to perform Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto; he will again join the orchestra in the 2026-27 season for the First Brahms Concerto. Víkingur Ólafsson has received the Rolf Schock Prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts as well as the Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medal. He has been awarded Iceland’s highest honor, the Order of the Falcon; additionally, he has received the Icelandic Export Award and the Nordic Council Music Prize and was named Artist of the Year by Gramo­phone in 2019 and by Musical America in 2025.

Lucerne Festival debut on 23 November 2019 in a recital that included works by Bach and Beethoven; most recently, he performed in seven concerts here in May 2026 as part of the Pulse Festival, which he curated.

August 2026