The uniquely talented Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson will make his Australian debut in March 2024, performing two concerts at the Adelaide Festival, before heading for Sydney and Melbourne.

One of today’s most sought-after classical musicians, Ólafsson will play JS Bach’s monumental, enigmatic Goldberg Variations, as part of his 2023–24 world tour.

Víkingur Ólafsson. Photo © Markus Jans

Praised for revitalising classical music, Ólafsson’s recordings for Deutsche Grammophon – Philip Glass Piano Works (2017), Johann Sebastian Bach (2018), Debussy Rameau (2020), Mozart & Contemporaries (2021) and From Afar (2022) – have been streamed over 600 million times.

His new album featuring Bach’s Goldberg Variations will be released on 6 October.

“At least to me, the Goldberg Variations’ genius lies not in the general, but the specific, as each variation unfolds, one must be wholly gripped by its individual drama and affect, drawn into its own marvellous little microcosm and filled with the joy of discovering it,” writes Ólafsson on his website.

Born in Reykjavík in 1984, Ólafsson had a musical upbringing; his mother is a pianist and taught him from a young age, while his father is both a composer and an architect. After...