March 1, 2025
A Visionary at the Keyboard
Víkingur Ólafsson brings warmth to Davies Symphony Hall (with a little help from his friends)
by Steve Holt
by Steve Holt
On his recent album From Afar, Icelandic pianist Víkingur Ólafsson was so intent on capturing some of his childhood musical memories, he recorded the tracks on an upright piano.
“When I was growing up, I actually had an upright piano in my bedroom,” he says. “Since the album features smaller pieces that represent my musical upbringing and my musical roots in Iceland, and there was an upright in the studio, I decided to give the upright a really serious treatment. And then I liked it so much I released the album on both upright and grand.”
This glimpse into Ólafsson’s imagination and creativity reflects his willingness to push the envelope in service of his art. Those traits will take center stage when he performs at the San Francisco Symphony twice in the coming months.
The January concerts feature John Adams’s After the Fall, a San Francisco Symphony commission and world premiere, written especially for Ólafsson. “I've known John now since our first concerts together, with his Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes? [coincidentally premiered by Yuja Wang, Ólafsson’s recital partner here in March]. John and I played the very last two weeks before the music world shut down because of COVID. From that point on, we became very good friends and very much partners in crime in music.”
“When I was growing up, I actually had an upright piano in my bedroom,” he says. “Since the album features smaller pieces that represent my musical upbringing and my musical roots in Iceland, and there was an upright in the studio, I decided to give the upright a really serious treatment. And then I liked it so much I released the album on both upright and grand.”
This glimpse into Ólafsson’s imagination and creativity reflects his willingness to push the envelope in service of his art. Those traits will take center stage when he performs at the San Francisco Symphony twice in the coming months.
The January concerts feature John Adams’s After the Fall, a San Francisco Symphony commission and world premiere, written especially for Ólafsson. “I've known John now since our first concerts together, with his Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes? [coincidentally premiered by Yuja Wang, Ólafsson’s recital partner here in March]. John and I played the very last two weeks before the music world shut down because of COVID. From that point on, we became very good friends and very much partners in crime in music.”
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Ólafsson says Johann Sebastian Bach is a major presence in After the Fall. “You could say that about so many masterworks: Brahms’s First Piano Concerto, almost every piece that Beethoven wrote. Bach is perhaps the most important composer for me, the one composer who I play basically daily, one way or another. When John was writing this concerto, he had listened to quite a lot of me playing Bach. I’ll just say that in After the Fall, it’s a very decisive turn of events that leads to J.S. Bach’s visit to this music.”
For Ólafsson, having a concerto written especially for him is like going to a master tailor. “What John has written for me feels musically very bespoke, in terms of the overall sonority, and a sense of fantasy and structure and colors; the musical narrative as a whole. It seems almost familiar to me, before I have even given the world premiere. The tailor has done a masterful job!”
As part of his preparations, Ólafsson will travel to San Francisco a week before the premiere for sessions with Adams. “It’ll just be me and John, and hopefully a rehearsal pianist, to play the orchestra part. It’ll be a very intense week of shaping it up for interpretation and for the premiere. It’s always exciting to go into the process and face that huge question mark that a world premiere always has.”
After the Fall also marks Ólafsson’s first time working with conductor David Robertson. “It’s very unusual for me to perform a world premiere with a conductor I’ve never worked with before. But he’s a tremendous conductor, and a great authority on John’s music. I just know this piece is unbelievably beautiful and strikingly dramatic. If that doesn't come across to the public, it’s probably my fault!”
Ólafsson is equally looking forward to his return to Davies Symphony Hall in March for his duo recital with Yuja Wang. What made them team up? “Pianists like us don't often meet, because we’re rarely in the same place at the same time,” he says. “But somehow, Yuja and I were playing the same festival in Latvia in 2021. It turned out we were quite fond of each other’s work, and she suggested that we try a piano duo, which I don’t think either of us had done before, and I thought, why not? We came up with a highly unusual program, a wonder program I’d call it, and we’ve done it about ten times in Europe.”
“The idea with this and so many of my recital programs is to hopefully blur the boundaries a little bit of what is new and what is old,” he says. The program opens with Luciano Berio’s 1960s work Wasserklavier, which leads into the F-minor Fantasy of Schubert. “For a brief period it feels like they're contemporaries, as opposed to people separated by over a hundred years,” Ólafsson notes. Also on the program are three works by American composers—Adams’s Hallelujah Junction, Conlon Nancarrow’s StudyNo. 6, arranged by Thomas Adès, and John Cage’s Experiences No. 1—and Arvo Pärt’s Hymn to a Great City and a two-piano version of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances, Opus 45. “It’s sort of off-the-beaten-path repertoire that I think works very beautifully,” Ólafsson says.
Both Ólafsson and Wang play to rapturous audiences all over the world. But what are the dynamics when two piano titans share a stage? “Two grand pianos can feel overwhelming, but they can also feel incredibly fascinating, if you know how to treat this kind of dual machine, if you know how to texturize it.” He finds the nature of this collaboration to be especially stimulating. “With Yuja and with this program, I think our soloist egos withdraw a little bit, even if we are certainly challenging each other. But it has to be about the music and how you can make two pianos and 176 keys into something magical. In the end, you meet in that place that is the music. When we perform together it doesn’t feel like ‘show business,’ like two pianists competing for attention on stage, but rather two pianists creating something together that is larger than the two individuals.”
Steve Holt is an arts reporter and contributing writer to the San Francisco Symphony program book.
For Ólafsson, having a concerto written especially for him is like going to a master tailor. “What John has written for me feels musically very bespoke, in terms of the overall sonority, and a sense of fantasy and structure and colors; the musical narrative as a whole. It seems almost familiar to me, before I have even given the world premiere. The tailor has done a masterful job!”
As part of his preparations, Ólafsson will travel to San Francisco a week before the premiere for sessions with Adams. “It’ll just be me and John, and hopefully a rehearsal pianist, to play the orchestra part. It’ll be a very intense week of shaping it up for interpretation and for the premiere. It’s always exciting to go into the process and face that huge question mark that a world premiere always has.”
After the Fall also marks Ólafsson’s first time working with conductor David Robertson. “It’s very unusual for me to perform a world premiere with a conductor I’ve never worked with before. But he’s a tremendous conductor, and a great authority on John’s music. I just know this piece is unbelievably beautiful and strikingly dramatic. If that doesn't come across to the public, it’s probably my fault!”
Ólafsson is equally looking forward to his return to Davies Symphony Hall in March for his duo recital with Yuja Wang. What made them team up? “Pianists like us don't often meet, because we’re rarely in the same place at the same time,” he says. “But somehow, Yuja and I were playing the same festival in Latvia in 2021. It turned out we were quite fond of each other’s work, and she suggested that we try a piano duo, which I don’t think either of us had done before, and I thought, why not? We came up with a highly unusual program, a wonder program I’d call it, and we’ve done it about ten times in Europe.”
“The idea with this and so many of my recital programs is to hopefully blur the boundaries a little bit of what is new and what is old,” he says. The program opens with Luciano Berio’s 1960s work Wasserklavier, which leads into the F-minor Fantasy of Schubert. “For a brief period it feels like they're contemporaries, as opposed to people separated by over a hundred years,” Ólafsson notes. Also on the program are three works by American composers—Adams’s Hallelujah Junction, Conlon Nancarrow’s StudyNo. 6, arranged by Thomas Adès, and John Cage’s Experiences No. 1—and Arvo Pärt’s Hymn to a Great City and a two-piano version of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances, Opus 45. “It’s sort of off-the-beaten-path repertoire that I think works very beautifully,” Ólafsson says.
Both Ólafsson and Wang play to rapturous audiences all over the world. But what are the dynamics when two piano titans share a stage? “Two grand pianos can feel overwhelming, but they can also feel incredibly fascinating, if you know how to treat this kind of dual machine, if you know how to texturize it.” He finds the nature of this collaboration to be especially stimulating. “With Yuja and with this program, I think our soloist egos withdraw a little bit, even if we are certainly challenging each other. But it has to be about the music and how you can make two pianos and 176 keys into something magical. In the end, you meet in that place that is the music. When we perform together it doesn’t feel like ‘show business,’ like two pianists competing for attention on stage, but rather two pianists creating something together that is larger than the two individuals.”
Steve Holt is an arts reporter and contributing writer to the San Francisco Symphony program book.
