Series: Concert   Garrick Ohlsson, piano

Supplemental Event Information:

Back

Biography

Garrick Ohlsson Pianist<br> <br> 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 he has long been regarded as one of the world&rsquo;s foremost exponents of the music of Fr&eacute;d&eacute;ric Chopin, Ohlsson commands an enormous repertoire, which ranges over the entire piano literature. A student of the late Claudio Arrau, Ohlsson has come to be noted for his masterly performances of the works of Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert, as well as the Romantic repertoire. His concerto repertoire alone is unusually wide and eclectic&mdash;ranging from Haydn and Mozart to works of the 21st century; he has at his command some 80 concertos. A musician of commanding versatility, Ohlsson is a consummate chamber pianist who performs regularly with the leading chamber groups. <p>In 2005&ndash;06, Ohlsson will perform in North America with the symphony orchestras of Cleveland, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Houston, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, Seattle, Washington, D.C., and Berkeley; and the National Arts Centre, St. Paul Chamber, and the London Philharmonic at Lincoln Center. Special projects include a tour with the Tak&aacute;cs Quartet and appearances at the Bonn Beethovenfest. Ohlsson will appear in recital at venues including Avery Fisher Hall, Skidmore and Muhlenberg colleges, SUNY Purchase, University of California at Davis, and in Fresno, Denver, and Baton Rouge.</p> <p>Highlights of Ohlsson&rsquo;s 2004&ndash;05 season included performances with Orpheus at Carnegie Hall and with the Emerson String Quartet at Zankel Hall, and a tour with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra in North America. In recent seasons Ohlsson has performed recital series devoted to the original music and transcriptions of Liszt, Rachmaninoff, and Busoni; he has also commissioned and premiered a new work for solo piano, American Berserk by John Adams, and a piano concerto by the noted young composer Michael Hersch. In the summer of 2005, he presented the complete cycle of Beethoven piano sonatas for the first time at the Verbier Festival in Switzerland, a project he will repeat in 2006 at both Tanglewood and Ravinia.</p> <p>Ohlsson is an avid chamber musician and has collaborated with the Cleveland, Emerson, Tak&aacute;cs, and Tokyo string quartets, among other ensembles. Together with violinist Jorja Fleezanis and cellist Michael Grebanier, he is a founding member of the San Francisco-based FOG Trio. A prolific recording artist, Ohlsson can be heard on the Arabesque, RCA Victor Red Seal, Angel, Bridge, BMG, Delos, H&auml;nssler, Nonesuch, Telarc, and Virgin Classics labels. He has recorded the complete solo works of Chopin and four volumes of Beethoven sonatas for Arabesque.</p> <p>A native of White Plains, New York, Ohlsson began his piano studies at the age of 8. He attended the Westchester Conservatory of Music and at 13 entered The Juilliard School in New York City. His musical development has been influenced in completely different ways by a succession of distinguished teachers, most notably Claudio Arrau, Olga Barabini, Tom Lishman, Sascha Gorodnitzki, Rosina Lh&eacute;vinne, and Irma Wolpe. Although he won First Prizes at the 1966 Busoni Competition in Italy and 1968 Montr&eacute;al Piano Competition, it was his 1970 triumph at the Chopin Competition in Warsaw, where he won the Gold Medal, that brought him worldwide recognition as one of the finest pianists of his generation. Since then he has made nearly a dozen tours of Poland, where he remains immensely popular. Ohlsson was awarded the Avery Fisher Prize in 1994 and received the 1998 University Musical Society Distinguished Artist Award in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He makes his home in San Francisco.</p>