Garrick Ohlsson

One cannot help but take notice when pianist Garrick Ohlsson enters a room. At 6’4” and 260 pounds, he’s hard to miss. He is possessed of a muscular style at the piano that matches his frame. One of today’s top virtuosos, Ohlsson, age 64, was the first American to win the prestigious International Frederick Chopin Competition in Warsaw in 1970.  Over the subsequent years he’s embraced a broad range of repertoire, yet Chopin has always held a place of honor, not just because of the competition that launched his career. He grew up in New York City at a time when all-Chopin piano recitals were standard practice.

A 2003 profile in the New York Times by James Oestreich mentioned that Ohlsson lives in San Francisco with his companion, Robert Guter, an historic preservationist. While Ohlsson doesn’t like being labelled solely as a gay pianist, he doesn’t pretend to be otherwise. He is out and proud, and “I’m no coward,” he says.

No coward, indeed. As proof, late last year Ohlsson released Close Connections, a disc on which most of the music was written by gay male composers. I received this album as a Christmas gift, and I’m embarrassed that I’m just now listening to it (sorry, Rob!). It contains Triptych (1969), a solo piano piece by Louis Weingarden (1943-1989) written for Ohlsson. Weingarden also wrote a piano concerto (1974) for Ohlsson, and that composition was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 1977. Weingarden and Ohlsson were good friends, even roommates for a time. Also on this disc is Handwork, a piece for solo piano commissioned by Ohlsson in 1986, written by gay composer William Hibbard (1939-1989). Robert Helps (1928-2001), another gay composer, is represented by the solo piano composition “Shall We Dance”.

Of Sicilian and Swedish heritage,  Mr. Ohlsson was born in White Plains, NY. A late starter, he did not begin piano lessons until age 8, but by age 13, he was a student at Juilliard. During his student days he was a whiz at math and languages (he speaks English, Polish, Italian, Spanish, French, German and Swedish).

He has long championed the finger-busting piano compositions of Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924), going back to his days with his teacher Frida van Dieren, whom Ohlsson called ''a great-grand-pupil” of Busoni.  ''I played my first Busoni when I was 12,'' he said. ''So I grew up with the legend.'' Mr. Ohlsson went on to win the Busoni Competition in Bolzano, Italy, in 1966, at 18. He brags that playing the Busoni piano concerto (a staggering 70 mintes in length) is no harder than playing the Brahms first piano concerto (D-minor) twice.

Here we have Ohlsson’s performance of Chopin’s Etude #1, Op. 10, from the time of his winning the International Frederick Chopin Competition in Warsaw (1970):