The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts presents acclaimed Grammy-winning pianist Garrick Ohlsson – the only American ever to win Poland’s prestigious International Frédéric Chopin Piano Competition – in a program of solo works by Chopin and Brahms on Friday, November 8, 2019, 7:30 pm in the Bram Goldsmith Theater at The Wallis. Ohlsson, a musician of “razor-sharp accuracy (and) a sound so lush it almost glistens” (The Seattle Times), puts his unique musical stamp on Chopin’s Nocturne in B-flat minor and Sonata in B minor. He also performs three sets of works by Brahms: Rhapsodies, Op. 79; Fantasien, Op. 16; and Variations on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 35 (Book II). Hailed for making “the essentially percussive piano sing like a meadowlark” (NPR), Ohlsson, among his considerable accomplishments, was featured in The Art of Chopin, a documentary film co-produced by Polish, French, British and Chinese television stations in recognition of the Chopin bicentenary in 2010. In recent years, the English label Hyperion re-released Ohlsson’s 16-disc set of the Complete Works of Chopin followed by a 2-disc set featuring the complete Brahms piano variations.
A Preludes @ The Wallis pre-concert conversation moderated by Classical KUSC’s Brian Lauritzen will be held before the concert at 6:30 pm. Preludes @ The Wallis includes a complimentary glass of wine.
“Garrick Ohlsson is among the world’s leading interpreters of Chopin and Brahms,” says The Wallis’ Artistic Director Paul Crewes. “His Wallis debut program showcases his tremendous technical skill and artistry enhanced by the sparkling acoustics of The Wallis’ Bram Goldsmith Theater.”
Ohlsson, a native of White Plains, N.Y. who makes his home in San Francisco, began his piano studies at age eight, at the Westchester Conservatory of Music; at thirteen, 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 also the 2014 recipient of the Jean Gimbel Lane Prize in Piano Performance from the Northwestern University Bienen School of Music.
Tickets, $39 to $99, are on sale now. The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts is located at 9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd, Beverly Hills. To purchase tickets and for more information, please call 310-746-4000 or visit TheWallis.org/Garrick.