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, 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. 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 at his command some 80 concertos.
In the 2007-08 season, Mr. Ohlsson appears in North America with the symphony orchestras of Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Fort Worth, Houston, Indianapolis, Minnesota, Nashville, San Francisco, Seattle, and Toronto. Special projects include performances in Berkeley and Los Angeles with Mark Morris Dance Group and pianist Yoko Nozaki in the critically acclaimed “Mozart Dances”; performances with the Russian National Orchestra and Vladimir Jurowski in California and at New York’s Lincoln Center; and a Florida tour with the Pittsburgh Symphony. With the Sydney Symphony and Vladimir Ashkenazy, he will perform Rachmaninov’s Third Piano Concerto to be recorded live on the Octavia Records label. A recital project focusing on the piano music of Scriabin and Russian contemporaries will begin in San Francisco and San Diego in the spring and will carry through the 08/09 season. Additionally, he performs with the Warsaw Philharmonic, RTVE Madrid, and the MDR Leipzig Symphony Orchestra.
In 2006-07, Mr. Ohlsson opened the Mostly Mozart Festival in New York in a live, nationally televised performance. He also appeared in North America and Canada with the symphony orchestras of Atlanta, Detroit, Milwaukee, Montreal, New Jersey, Oregon, Pittsburgh, San Diego, and Utah. A series of recitals in Anchorage, Boston, Cleveland, Florida, Los Angeles, Ottawa, and San Francisco culminated with three recitals of Beethoven sonatas at Lincoln Center, and a performance of Beethoven’s “Emperor” concerto at Carnegie Hall with Orchestra of St. Luke’s. In Europe, he performed at the BBC Proms with the Budapest Festival Orchestra, at the Warsaw Chopin Festival, with the Czech Philharmonic, with the BBC Philharmonic, and in recital in Spain and Italy.
In the 2005-06 season, Mr. Ohlsson performed in North America with the symphony orchestras of Cleveland, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C.; and the National Arts Centre, St. Paul Chamber, and the London Philharmonic at Lincoln Center, among others. Special projects included a tour with the Takács Quartet and appearances at the Bonn Beethovenfest, Germany. In the summer of 2006, he presented the complete cycle of Beethoven piano sonatas in both the Ravinia and Tanglewood festivals, a cycle he performed for the first time in the summer of 2005 at Switzerland’s prestigious Verbier Festival.
Mr. 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.
A prolific recording artist, Mr. 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 all scheduled to be available during this season, the third of which won a Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Soloist Performance.
A native of White Plains, N.Y., Mr. 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. Mr. 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.
