World-renowned pianist Garrick Ohlsson is one of 92NY’s most treasured musical friends. He has performed on our stage more than a dozen times, his last solo concert in an empty Kaufmann Concert Hall on March 14, 2020 – a sudden pivot to our very first livestreamed event when the pandemic closed our doors.
Ohlsson won the prestigious International Chopin Competition in 1970 at age 22 – the first, and still, the only American ever to do so. In a career that has him performing music by Brahms, Beethoven, Prokofiev, and more, it is Chopin that remains at the core of his repertoire, and he returns to our stage on November 12 for his first all-Chopin recital in New York City in over a decade. Ahead of his concert, he talked with us about his love for this music, why Chopin remains relevant, his favorite things to do when in NYC, and more.
Asking a pianist “why Chopin” might be like asking the rest of us “why chocolate?” But in a career built on a wide-ranging repertoire, what is it about Chopin’s music that has kept it at the heart of your artistry?
Ah, there are many, many things. For me, Chopin is a consummate poet, who in nine minutes of a barcarolle can say what most composers would need three hours to say. Of all the great composers, it is Chopin who is the poet of the heart. He takes you on a personal emotional journey. In Poland, where I won the prize, they very much consider Chopin “theirs.” But Chopin belongs to everyone. This is true for pianists especially, because Chopin’s music is like a Rosetta Stone for how to play the instrument – both technically and in terms of emotion. He teaches you how to do it. Every good piano teacher feels they have the key to Chopin. But there’s actually a very private relationship that everyone gets with him. When I won the competition in 1970, I already knew how much I adored Chopin (like you say, “why chocolate?”). But my affinity for him has only grown.
What do you think makes Chopin’s music so universally beloved and what, to you, explains its enduring relevance?
Well, first, he’s one of the great melodists of all time. Beethoven wrote a lot of great tunes, but he’s not a tunesmith. Like Mozart and Tchaikovsky, Chopin grew melodies like a tree grows leaves. His music also mesmerizes. He seduces rather than commands. And because of this, he touches people all over the world. Chopin addresses such a wide range of emotions, from ecstatic joy to heartbreaking sadness – the chiaroscuro of human feelings – and that is timeless and something that speaks to us as powerfully today as ever.
In a New York Times review of your 92NY performance of Liszt’s B-Minor Sonata, the critic wrote, “Ohlsson’s gifts as a storyteller held the audience spellbound.” Do you see yourself as a storyteller through music?
Yes, come to think of it! Chopin and Liszt and Beethoven and Mozart – they’re not here to tell us their stories. We interpreters have to make their music alive and beautiful and compelling while we play it. The narrative of a piece of music is very, very important to me. It transcends anything academic and puts the focus on, “what is this composer telling us at any given moment?”
Another way of looking at this is that I think of myself as a tour guide. You go to see a great monument of antiquity, and you buy a book or hire a guide. You can’t see everything interesting in a limited time, so you’re told, “don’t miss this” or “don’t miss that.” Similarly, when you’re playing something as complex as a great work of music, you have to find a way to identify the major points for the listener. You can’t illuminate every note.
Also, you don’t want to make the first bars so beautiful that there’s nowhere to go. If you’re playing a Chopin nocturne, for example, it’s a bit of a magic trick – it has to get more and more beautiful until the end, because that is what Chopin intended.
Please tell us about the program for your upcoming concert and what listeners can expect to hear.
I think a great deal about how I build a program, and I think this one has a very good feng shui! It has a real line and direction. I start very quietly with a nocturne – I think it’s very beautiful to begin this way. I move on to the Barcarolle and the F-Minor Fantasy, which has the power of a lot of Beethoven. The whole first half builds with increasing intensity. Following intermission, I play an exquisite, delicious impromptu before the B-Minor Sonata – one of Chopin’s most beloved masterpieces, with a profound slow movement before a thrilling, take-no-prisoners finale. I mean wow. When I was 20, I would play certain pieces and get so excited I would forget to breathe! Now I pace myself. Anyway, it’s a marvelous program, and I think the audience will love it.
The 92nd Street Y is celebrating its 150th anniversary this season! Our concerts history is rich with performances by many of the world’s most eminent pianists (one of your teachers – the great Claudio Arrau – performed in Kaufmann Concert Hall in 1948, the year you were born). Since your own first performance on our stage in 1980, you’ve joined us many times. Is there something particularly special or meaningful to you about performing at The 92nd Street Y?
That’s incredible about Claudio Arrau. And absolutely! 92NY’s Kaufmann Concert Hall is the ideal hall for a piano recital in New York. The sound is marvelous. The hall is large enough that it can house the grandeur of a piano – or of chamber music – when the music gets big. What I mean is, a piano cannot do what an orchestra can do, but it can suggest what an orchestra can do. So that when the grandest piano writing on a modern piano is heard at 92NY, it doesn’t overwhelm the space, it sounds magnificently … grand. But it’s also a beautifully intimate hall. So, as a pianist, you can be as intimate or as thundering as the piano and the literature will allow. And you get the whole range of impact. The reverberation is also ideal. And it all feels and sounds great on stage, which is very important to us artists. It’s an ideal hall for piano and chamber music, and acoustically, one of the ideal spaces in New York City.
Also, New York has some of the best and most sophisticated concertgoers in the world. But not all New York audiences are the same. The 92nd Street Y – with its focus on chamber music and recitals – has the most intensely informed and interested and passionate audiences of all. I love playing there. And I’m so looking forward to this concert.
Finally, you’re a native New Yorker who has lived in San Francisco for the past 25-plus years. What are three things you miss about NYC and always look forward to coming back to?
1. Bicycling in Central Park!
2. Concerts and the opera and museums and galleries – all the things that make New York so wonderful.
3. Zabar’s and Fairway! The choices are greater than just about anywhere in the world.
Garrick Ohlsson Plays Chopin – Sunday, November 12 at 2 PM in Kaufmann Concert Hall. Additional details here.