Since his triumph as winner of the 1970 Chopin International Piano Competition, pianist Garrick Ohlsson has established himself worldwide as a musician of magisterial interpretive and technical prowess.
Although long regarded as one of the world’s leading exponents of the music of Frédéric Chopin, Mr. Ohlsson commands an enormous repertoire, which ranges over the entire piano literature. A student of the late Claudio Arrau, Mr. Ohlsson has come to be noted for his masterly performances of the works of Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert, as well as the Romantic repertoire. To date he has at his command more than 80 concertos, ranging from Haydn and Mozart to works of the 21st century, the most recent being “Oceans Apart” by Justin Dello Joio commissioned for him by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and now available on Bridge Recordings.
Read Full Bio
The Royal Conservatory of Music
Toronto, Canada
Dekelboum Concert Hall, The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center
Baltimore, MD, United States
Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall
Baltimore, MD, United States
The Music Center at Strathmore
Photo: Jim Morris
Baltimore, MD, United States
Garrick Ohlsson plays a recital on November 8 at Toronto’s Royal Conservatory of Music, with a program of works by Shostakovich, Brahms and Chopin. He will then play the solo in Brahms’ monumental Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra on November 13 at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, on November 14 at Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, and on November 15 at…
On September 18 and 19, Garrick Ohlsson joins forces with conductor David Afkham and the San Francisco Symphony to explore the musical orbit of Robert and Clara Schumann. Robert’s Symphony No. 4 begins with a catchy rising-and-falling figure, the “Clara theme,” derived from one of Clara’s own piano compositions. Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 1 is both an elegy for Robert and a tender…
Garrick Ohlsson’s complete Chopin box is due for re-release on October 30, and will be available for pre-order from Hyperion on August 21. “This monumental recording project first came about when the American record company Arabesque approached me with an irresistible offer to record the complete works of Chopin. I accepted with enthusiasm and an awareness of the magnitude of the task. My…
The Pianist: Conversations with Ohlsson is both an autobiography in interviews and a record of a life in music, including photographs and musical examples.
Conversations with the greatest pianists of the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries is a new book series of The Fryderyk Chopin Institute. Garrick Ohlsson is the main character of the first book in the series, authored by Kamila Stępień-Kutera, who has an impressive resume in music theory and Polish philology, and a PhD from the Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences. The Pianist:…
From his first straightforward passage, the pianist played with a declarative directness. The statement and development of the opening movement’s themes were suave, even self-effacing, before turning clamorous and ferocious.
“With Garrick Ohlsson as soloist, Brahms’ Concerto occupied the second half of the program. From his first straightforward passage, the pianist played with a declarative directness. The statement and development of the opening movement’s themes were suave, even self-effacing, before turning clamorous and ferocious. His double-octave forays up and down the keyboard hit their mark.…