Víkingur Ólafsson

Víkingur Ólafsson (born 14 February 1984) is an Icelandic pianist. He has performed with leading orchestras in Europe and America, including Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philharmonia Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, and with conductors including Thomas Adès, Esa-Pekka Salonen and Santtu-Matias Rouvali. He has won numerous awards for his playing, including Album of the Year at the 2019 BBC Music Magazine Awards for his ground-breaking album Johann Sebastian Bach.Víkingur's album Philip Glass Piano Works saw him named “Iceland’s Glenn Gould” by the New York Times, "breathtakingly brilliant pianist" by Gramophone magazine, , and Le Monde herald his "volcanic temperament, great virtuosity, taste for challenges."Víkingur was the soloist in the opening concert of Harpa in Reykjavík, playing Edvard Grieg's A-minor piano concerto with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Vladimir Ashkenazy.In the 2019-20 season Víkingur will be artist-in-residence at Berlin Konzerthaus, with fourteen performances over eleven different projects, playing concertos by Thomas Adès, Robert Schumann, Daníel Bjarnason and Mozart, two solo recitals and chamber programmes with the likes of Martin Fröst and Florian Boesch. He has an exclusive recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon.