Czech Chamber Music Society • Víkingur Ólafsson

Víkingur Ólafsson

piano

The gifts of the Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson include perfect pitch and the phenomenon of musical synaesthesia (he “hears” colours). In recent years, he has earned recognition as the world’s “new superstar of classical piano”, as the Daily Telegraph has called him. Critics acclaim his exceptional technical skill and boundless virtuosity, but above all they emphasise his innovative approach to musical interpretation, thanks to which his has been nicknamed “Iceland’s Glenn Gould” (as he was first called by the New York Times). Like Gould, Ólafsson is able to see even very familiar works with new eyes, find their hidden qualities, and arrive at conceptions that are entirely new and yet natural and sensitive.

He demonstrated this most recently with a new CD of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, issued by Deutsche Grammophon in October 2023. “I have dreamed of recording this work for 25 years” says Ólafsson, who devoted an entire concert season to this already successful album, presenting his original interpretation of that masterpiece live on a world tour appearing on six continents to perform at such halls as Carnegie Hall, Vienna’s Konzerthaus, the Zurich Tonhalle, the Philharmonie de Paris, Tokyo’s Suntory Hall, and Prague’s Rudolfinum. 

Already in the past, his mastery earned him many awards, such as the title Artist of the Year 2019 awarded by the magazine Gramophone, and his recordings twice earned him the Opus Klassik prize and Album of the Year 2019 from the BBC Music Magazine. Among his most popular albums with the critics and the public, which he recorded on the Deutsche Grammophon label, have been Philip Glass Piano Works (2017), Johann Sebastian Bach (2018), Debussy – Rameau (2020), and Mozart & Contemporaries (2021).

Born in Reykjavik, he got his start at the piano under his mother’s guidance. “As a child, I saw the piano as a toy,” admits Ólafsson, adding that he has been able to preserve that playful approach to some extent not only as a student at the Juilliard School, but even to this day.