Vikingur Olafsson

Víkingur Ólafsson (14 February 1984) is an Icelandic pianist.

Ólafsson has performed with leading orchestras in Europe and the United States, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, and with conductors such as Thomas Adès, Esa-Pekka Salonen and Santtu-Matias Rouvali. He has won numerous awards for his performances, including Album of the Year at the 2019 BBC Music Magazine Awards for his recording Johann Sebastian Bach.

Following his album Philip Glass Piano Works, Ólafsson was described as ‘the Glenn Gould of Iceland’ by The New York Times and ‘a surprisingly brilliant pianist’ by Gramophone magazine, and was praised by Le Monde for his ‘volcanic temperament, great virtuosity and taste for challenges’.

He was the soloist at the opening concert of Harpa in Reykjavik, playing Grieg's Piano Concerto in A minor with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Vladímir Ashkenazi.

During the 2019–20 season, Ólafsson will be artist in residence at the Konzerthaus Berlin, with fourteen performances across eleven different projects, playing concertos by Thomas Adès, Robert Schumann, Daníel Bjarnason and Mozart, two solo recitals and chamber programmes with artists such as Martin Fröst and Florian Boesch.

In 2016, he signed an exclusive contract with Deutsche Grammophon.