Above and featured images: Pianist Garrick Ohlsson
Visiting pianist Garrick Ohlsson has returned to Australia, to tour with Musica Viva for the first time after the pandemic. We welcome back Ohlsson’s superlative skills of interpretation, the humble, strong humanity and steadfast technique of this sensitive musician.
The typical audience response to a Garrick Ohlsson interpretation is often that of stilled wonder. Such response was evident during this first Sydney concert of the national tour. The crowd of piano and Ohlsson fans obviously loved the programme and the playing on offer.
Being able to stay behind after the concert for the Musica Viva ‘Meet the Artist’ Q and A session was a real treat. Facilitated by Musica Viva’s Director of Concerts and Communities, Katherine Kemp, it offered insights into aspects of this musician’s approach to the featured composers, emotion and recital preparation.
As is often the case with Musica Viva concerts, an Australian composition in world premiere was heard. For this event the premiere was Thomas Misson’s intelligent, complex, yet beautifully sculptured Convocations. This new work was commissioned by a supporter of Musica Viva as a birthday gift to their spouse.
The composer joined Ohlsson in the Q and A with responses to Katherine Kemp’s questions and many questions from audience. These questions were on topics including his compositional journey, writing for the piano and recital preparation for a celebrated, popular artist such as Garrick Ohlsson.
Misson’s work came just after interval in the programme. It’s innovative approach to shifting textures and effect and building them across the keyboard was the perfect playground for a pianist of Ohlsson’s calibre.
Above: Composer Thomas Misson, whose work ‘Convocations’ was premiered during this recital.
Extremes of register and nuance in this exciting new addition to the solo piano canon were heard here in this dazzling premiere. Ohlsson’s arsenal of dynamic options was expertly applied, as was his ability to make sense of any dense texture.
This pianist’s exemplary and celebrated control at the keyboard was consistent and enjoyable throughout. Prior to his superb communication of colour in the Misson work, Garrick Ohlsson also
made fine dramatic and structural sense of the Liszt Piano Sonata in B Minor.
The loved work as realised in this concert was virtuosic, variegated and the layers of poetic comment thrilled. The first half of this recital was a Schubert-Liszt event, reinforcing the link between the composers as well as Liszt’s admiration of Schubert’s lyricism and invention.
The Impromptu in C minor, Op 90 No 1 was a beautifully graded start to the concert. The variations and gentle theme material for this lesser heard work of the four impromptus was expertly nuanced from this soloist.
This spellbinding concert event was bookended by no less than the late Schubert and a colourful, introspective Scriabin bracket. Before this last bracket Garrick Ohlsson picked up the microphone to provide an articulate, informed and humorous introduction to the three Scriabin etudes and the longer Piano Sonata No 5 Op 53..
There were crystal clear textures again for all these works with expert voice leading and fitting emotional intensity. The range of articulation choices and ability from Ohlsson made this audience gasp and also welcome his encore of Chopin’s Nocturne Op 9 No 2 . This version was a unique utterance full of colours, shapes and pacing, the playing we are currently lucky to be witnessing on this tour via some exciting and thoughtfully constructed concert programmes.
Musica Viva’s tour of Garrick Ohlsson has a second Sydney concert with different programming on Saturday June 17 at 2pm. There is also a CD signing after the concert.