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Garrick Ohlsson Plays Chopin at Kaufmann Concert Hall in New York City


World-renowned pianist Garrick Ohlsson has had a career marked by celebrated performances of works of Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert

Published on November 07, 2023

The 92nd Street Y, New York (92NY), one of New York’s leading cultural venues, presents Garrick Ohlsson Plays Chopin on Sunday, November 12, 2023 at 2:00 pm at the Kaufmann Concert Hall. Online streaming is also available for 72 hours following the performance. Tickets start at $25 and are available online.

World-renowned pianist Garrick Ohlsson has had a career marked by celebrated performances of works of Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert, but there has been no greater force in the pianist’s repertoire than the music of Chopin. Ohlsson was the first – and remains the only – American winner of the Chopin International Piano Competition. In his first all-Chopin recital in New York City in over a decade, the acclaimed musician returns to the heart of his artistry.

All-CHOPIN

  • Nocturne in F Major, Op. 15, No. 1
  • Nocturne in B Major, Op. 9, No. 3
  • Barcarolle in F-sharp Major, Op. 60
  • Fantasy in F Minor, Op. 49
  • Scherzo No. 3 in C-sharp Minor, Op. 39
  • Impromptu No. 2 in F-sharp Major, Op. 36
  • Piano Sonata No. 3 in B Minor, Op. 58

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, 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. 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. Also just released on Reference Recordings is the complete Beethoven concerti with Sir Donald Runnicles and the Grand Teton Music Festival Orchestra.

A frequent guest with the orchestras in New Zealand and Australia, Ohlsson returned for a nine-city recital tour across Australia in June 2023 and will open the Nashville Symphony’s season in September, followed during the season by appearances with orchestras in Atlanta, Sarasota, Rhode Island, Singapore, Prague, Warsaw, Lyon and Oxford (UK). With recital programs including works from Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin to Brahms and Scriabin he can be heard in New York, Seattle, Baltimore, Prague, Katowice, Krakow and Wrocław. An avid chamber musician, Ohlsson has collaborated with the Cleveland, Emerson, Tokyo and Takacs string quartets. His recording with latter of the Amy Beach and Elgar quintets released by Hyperion in June 2020 received great press attention. Passionate about singing and singers, Ohlsson has appeared in recital with such legendary artists as Magda Olivero, Jessye Norman, and Ewa Podleś.

Garrick Ohlsson can be heard on the Arabesque, RCA Victor Red Seal, Angel, BMG, Delos, Hänssler, Nonesuch, Telarc, Hyperion and Virgin Classics labels. His ten-disc set of the complete Beethoven Sonatas, for Bridge Records, has garnered critical acclaim, including a GRAMMY® for Vol. 3. His recording of Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. 3, with the Atlanta Symphony and Robert Spano, was released in 2011. In the fall of 2008 the English label Hyperion re-released his 16-disc set of the Complete Works of Chopin followed in 2010 by all the Brahms piano variations, “Goyescas” by Enrique Granados, and music of Charles Tomlinson Griffes. Most recently on that label are Scriabin’s Complete Poèmes, Smetana Czech Dances, and études by Debussy, Bartok and Prokofiev. The latest CDs in his ongoing association with Bridge Records are the Complete Scriabin Sonatas, “Close Connections,” a recital of 20th-Century pieces, and two CDs of works by Liszt. In recognition of the Chopin bicentenary in 2010, Ohlsson was featured in a documentary “The Art of Chopin” co-produced by Polish, French, British and Chinese television stations. Most recently, both Brahms’ concerti and Tchaikovsky’s second piano concerto were released on live performance recordings with the Melbourne and Sydney Symphonies on their own recording labels, and Ohlsson was featured on Dvorak’s piano concerto in the Czech Philharmonic’s recordings of the composer’s complete symphonies & concertos, released July of 2014 on the Decca label.

A native of White Plains, N.Y., Garrick Ohlsson began his piano studies at the age of 8, at the Westchester Conservatory of Music; at 13 he 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 the 1968 Montréal Piano Competition, it was his 1970 triumph at the International Chopin Competition in Warsaw, where he won the Gold Medal (and remains the single American to have done so), 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, MI. He is the 2014 recipient of the Jean Gimbel Lane Prize in Piano Performance from the Northwestern University Bienen School of Music, and in August 2018 the Polish Deputy Culture Minister awarded him with the Gloria Artis Gold Medal for cultural merit. He is a Steinway Artist and makes his home in San Francisco.

“Garrick Ohlsson, playing without a score, dignified the piece [Busoni’s piano concerto] with his phenomenal pianism—never self-servingly virtuosic—and equally phenomenal memory.” – The Financial Times.

“What a sound! Ohlsson is famous for that great sonority, though he never seems to be working very hard to produce it. There are no histrionics, no flailing or thumping or grandstanding, just an incredible technique with razor-sharp accuracy, producing a sound so lush it almost glistens.” – Seattle Times.

2023/24 Tisch Music Season

Working within 92NY’s 150th Anniversary theme, Inspired by the Past, Transforming for the Future, 92NY’s Vice President, Tisch Music’s Amy Lam has curated a season featuring newly commissioned works and premieres and artist-driven programs that reference the history of 92NY, the artists themselves, and music more broadly. Some of the featured works at 92NY include the world premiere of a new, interdisciplinary project by Cécile McLorin Salvant, in which Salvant mines her classical music training to transform Baroque songs through a jazz-focused lens, the New York premiere of Damien Geter’s COTTON, which explores an African American narrative of past and present performed by Denyce Graves and Justin Austin, and a new program from Broadway legend Audra McDonald, who takes the stage with a program inspired by her Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Award-winning 30-year career.

Building on the theme of transformation, 11 of this season’s 42 concerts will be presented in 92NY’s newly renovated and creatively flexible Buttenwieser Hall at The Arnhold Center. In its Buttenwieser Hall programs, Tisch Music will continue to expand on-site audience engagement in new and exciting ways. As it continues to build its global audience (having secured approximately 5 million views from 200 countries and all 50 states for its original programming across the institution last year), 92NY will maintain its commitment to making its offerings available globally, with more than 20 events available for streaming and on-demand viewing.

The 2023/24 Tisch Music Season builds on the recent success of its Midsummer MusicFest, launched this year in celebration of 92NY’s 150th Anniversary. Consistent with 92NY’s anniversary theme, the annual Festival will look back on 92NY’s musical history, with 2023’s festival inspired by 92NY’s role in bringing jazz from small clubs to a concert hall setting. The Season also continues the evolution of Tisch Music’s flagship Lyrics & Lyricists series, doubling the American Songbook offerings and focusing on the genre as defined, not only by Broadway, but in the many genres of American music found across the country.

Culture Editor