FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
January 8, 2007
Contact: Colin Byrne
Sales and Communications Manager
Phone: (407) 646-1561
Fax: (407) 646-2692
E-mail: cbyrne@bachfestivalflorida.org
Winter Park, FL —“The Bach Festival Society is thrilled to have Garrick Ohlsson on its series this year. He exemplifies the high artistic quality the Bach Festival Society is known for presenting in Central Florida,” says the Bach Festival Society’s Executive Director, Betsy Gwinn. “Ohlsson will play in Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall in New York, which seats nearly 1,100. Our audience will have the rare privilege of seeing this artist in the intimate 400-seat John M. Tiedtke Concert Hall—an acoustically outstanding venue.” Both Ohlsson and violinist Midori are appearing this season on the “Great Performers at Lincoln Center” series in New York and the Bach Festival Society’s Visiting Artists Series, and Ohlsson’s appearance with the Bach Festival comes just two days before his performance in New York.
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 he has long been regarded as one of the world's leading exponents of the music of Frédéric Chopin, Mr. Ohlsson commands an enormous repertoire, ranging over the entire piano literature. A student of the late Claudio Arrau, Mr. Ohlsson has come to be noted for his masterly performances of the works of Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert, as well as the Romantic repertoire. His concerto repertoire alone is unusually wide and eclectic—from Haydn and Mozart to works of the 21st century—and to date he has at his command some 80 concertos. Ohlsson will play an all-Beethoven program for the Bach Festival Society’s Visiting Artist Series.
A native of White Plains, N.Y., Mr. Ohlsson began his piano studies at the age of 8. He attended the Westchester Conservatory of Music and at 13 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 1968 Montréal Piano Competition, it was his 1970 triumph at the Chopin Competition in Warsaw, where he won the Gold Medal, 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. Mr. Ohlsson was awarded the Avery Fisher Prize in 1994 and received the 1998 University Musical Society Distinguished Artist Award in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He makes his home in San Francisco.
Performance Information
About the Bach Festival Society
The Bach Festival Society, located in Winter Park, Florida, is the premier classical music organization in the state of Florida and one of the longest continuously operating Bach Festivals in the country. The Bach Festival Society brings the highest caliber of classical music to Central Florida. Performances are held in the intimate setting of the Tiedtke Concert Hall and the Knowles Memorial Chapel on the beautiful campus of Rollins College.
For more information regarding the upcoming season or to order tickets, please call the Bach Festival Society at 407-646-2182 or visit us online at www.bachfestivalflorida.org.