“Garrick Ohlsson and Slatkin (longstanding musical comrades) conspired a magnificent traversal of Brahms’s equally magnificent First Piano Concerto… The orchestral opening was trenchant, Ohlsson introducing the piano so naturally (his focus is always on the music he plays; no spurious look-at-me antics), pianist, conductor, and orchestra (wonderful woodwinds), unfolding the first…

“The great American pianist Garrick Ohlsson took the stage for Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5… playing with seemingly effortless precision, accuracy and control, no matter how fast and thick the notes came. …Ohlsson also displayed a deft and sensitive touch with the concerto’s melodies. He played with pointed precision in the minor-key theme of the first movement and with…

“(Ohlsson) retains a formidable technique, playing with seemingly effortless precision, accuracy and control, no matter how fast and thick the notes came.” “Ohlsson also displayed a deft and sensitive touch with the concerto’s melodies. He played with pointed precision in the minor-key theme of the first movement and with frictionless fluency in the Adagio, bringing out the…

“A critical debate has existed for years regarding Shostakovich’s G minor piano quintet. Shostakovich’s work remains so entangled with its reception by the Soviet regime that the alternating approval and opprobrium his music received in his own country have become an unfortunate (and inappropriate) barometer of musical substance and authenticity in ours. The quintet’s long popularity…