Víkingur Ólafsson plays Bach, Beethoven and Schubert at Wigmore Hall on 10, 11 and 12 September 2026.
Víkingur Ólafsson is an Icelandic pianist who has done something almost no living classical instrumentalist has, which is to build an audience of the size pop musicians recognise: his recordings have passed a billion streams. The 2023 album of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, which he then toured for a full season playing nothing else, won the 2025 Grammy for best classical instrumental solo. He holds the Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medal, the Nordic Council Music Prize and the Order of the Falcon, Iceland’s order of chivalry.
The reason is not the marketing. He programmes by argument rather than by chronology, setting works beside each other so that one explains the next, and he plays Bach with a clarity that made a great many people who thought they disliked the keyboard music change their minds. Opus 109, released in November 2025, puts Beethoven’s penultimate sonata at the centre and traces the Bach and Schubert lines that run into it.
He brings that programme to Wigmore Hall three times in one week: Thursday 10 and Friday 11 September 2026 at half past seven, and Saturday the 12th at one o’clock. Three performances of one programme in a single week is as close as the hall comes to a residency, and the Saturday lunchtime is priced and programmed apart from the evenings. Three chances at one programme, and the lunchtime is the cheapest.