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.
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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…
On July 16, Garrick Ohlsson plays with the Cleveland Orchestra once again, this time led by Semyon Bychkov. He will play Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 1, which will be preceded by Smetana’s The Moldau from Má vlast, and followed by Dvořák’s Symphony No. 8. He will then perform at Grant Park Music Festival on August 5. The evening will start with Juan Pablo…
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:…
Ohlsson made a deft, light-fingered case for the piece, which wastes no time getting into some dense pianistic material.
“Ohlsson made a deft, light-fingered case for the piece, which wastes no time getting into some dense pianistic material. The second movement came across as especially comforting: Ohlsson opened delicately with an extended solo before being gently joined by bassoonist Catherine Van Handel. The outer movements emphasized the pianist’s agility while retaining his elegant economy of…
