Carnegie Hall

In his 2024 Carnegie Hall recital debut, Víkingur Ólafsson performed one of the keyboard’s most demanding masterworks: J. S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations. While Ólafsson’s best-selling Goldberg recording earned “album of the year” recognitions worldwide and a 2025 Grammy Award for Best Classical Instrumental Solo, his recital was a reminder that the concert experience stands alone; it “revealed new layers of his interpretation: intensely emotional and intelligently paced, immaculate in its technique and organic in its phrasing. It was an artistic feat [that] mesmerize[d] Carnegie Hall” (The New York Times). In this next solo-recital world tour, Ólafsson performs seminal works by J. S. Bach and Beethoven, plus an exceedingly elusive sonata by Schubert. With the exception of Schubert’s brief scherzo movement, the entire program is organized around the tonalities of E major and minor, offering Ólafsson a powerful anchor for exploration.