Photo: Philip Jones Griffith
Garrick Ohlsson
Representation: Europe
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’s leading exponents of the music of Frédéric Chopin, Ohlsson commands an enormous repertoire spanning 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 – ranging from Haydn and Mozart to works of the 21st century – and to date he has some 80 concertos at his command. His past engagements include concertos with orchestras of the calibre of Pittsburgh Symphony, Czech Philharmonic, BBC Philharmonic, Sydney Symphony, Russian National Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Toronto Symphony, Boston Symphony and Houston Symphony orchestras and with the Budapest Festival Orchestra at the BBC Proms.
Ohlsson’s 2009/10 season includes engagements with the Atlanta Symphony (Rachmaninov/Spano); Indianapolis Symphony (Chopin/Bamert); New York Philharmonic (Martinu/Zhang); Baltimore Symphony (Beethoven/Belohlavek); BBC Scottish Symphony (Martinu/Volkov); Warsaw Philharmonic (Chopin/Witt); Milwaukee Symphony (Chopin/de Waart); Tonkunstler Orchestra, Vienna (Brahms/Litton); Houston Symphony (Rachmaninov/Graf); and the San Francisco Symphony (Chopin/Tilson Thomas). He will give recitals at Symphony Hall, Chicago; the Perelman Theater, Philadelphia; at the Prague Spring Festival; and at Chopin’s house in Warsaw on the anniversary of the composer’s birth.
In the 2008-09 season, Ohlsson appeared in North America with major orchestras such as the Atlanta, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and St. Louis symphonies, and also the National Symphony Orchestra, among others. Ohlsson joined the San Francisco Symphony for performances of Prokofiev’s Fifth Piano Concerto with Michael Tilson Thomas in San Francisco and on a west coast tour that included Seattle and Los Angeles’ Disney Hall. With pianist Yoko Nozaki, Ohlsson reprised his collaboration with the Mark Morris Dance Group in the critically acclaimed “Mozart Dances”; and with contralto Ewa Podles he embarked on a tour of North America and released a critically acclaimed live recording of their Wigmore Hall recital, on the venue’s own label. In Europe, Ohlsson performed with the Salzburg Mozarteum and Hugh Wolff; the Halle Orchestra with both Mark Elder and Edward Gardner; and the Deutsche Symphony Berlin.
Ohlsson is an avid chamber musician and has collaborated with the Cleveland, Emerson, Takács 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. His recital engagements have included appearances at the Ravinia, Tanglewood and Verbier Festivals. In 2008-9 Ohlsson’s recital programme focusing on the piano repertoire of Scriabin and his Russian contemporaries was herd in San Francisco, San Diego and at the 92nd Street Y. A recital series in 2006/7 took him to Boston, Cleveland, Florida, Los Angeles and San Francisco and culminated in three recitals of Beethoven sonatas at the Lincoln Center, New York.
A prolific recording artist, Ohlsson can be heard on the Arabesque, RCA Victor Red Seal, Angel, Bridge, BMG, Delos, Hänssler, Nonesuch, Telarc, and Virgin Classics labels. His undertaking of the complete Beethoven sonatas for Bridge Records has already resulted in 3 discs, the third of which won a Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Soloist Performance. Most recently, he released a 16-disc set of the complete works of Chopin for the Hyperion label and recorded a series with WQXR in New York in which he guides listeners through each of the Beethoven sonatas, playing excerpts and talking about the pieces.
A native of White Plains, N.Y., 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 Lhévinne and Irma Wolpe. Although he won First Prizes at the 1966 Busoni Competition in Italy and 1968 Montréal 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 retains immense personal popularity. Ohlsson was awarded the Avery Fisher Prize in 1994 and received the 1998 University Musical Society Distinguished Artist Award in Ann Arbor, Mich. In February 2008, he won a Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Soloist Performance (without Orchestra) for his Beethoven Sonatas, Vol. 3 (Bridge Records, Inc.). He makes his home in San Francisco.
Promoters please note: if you wish to include this biography in a concert programme etc, please contact Hazard Chase to ensure that you receive the most up to date version.
Email: Emily Eason
