Víkingur Ólafsson, piano

In just four years, Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson has become a mainstay on our season, and a welcome presence in Boston. 

Anything but routine, his programs are consistently brilliant and reliably unconventional. Ólafsson’s debut at Pickman Hall offered a thoughtfully curated and insightfully performed tour through the works of Mozart and his contemporaries. At Jordan Hall, he explored Bach’s landmark Goldberg Variations with striking clarity. And last season at Symphony Hall, he joined the dazzling, formidable Yuja Wang for a two-piano recital that bounded playfully across centuries and styles.  

Now, Ólafsson returns to Symphony Hall for his solo debut on that grand stage. With the title, he draws our attention to Beethoven’s antepenultimate piano sonata, Opus 109, composed in 1820. On the way to that monumental work, Ólafsson treats us to a journey through works by Bach, and earlier sonatas by Beethoven and Schubert, all in the key of E major or E minor.  

Eccentric? Maybe. Excellent, extraordinary, essential? Exactly.

Celebrity Series of Boston is now Vivo Performing Arts.