Veteran ivory tickler Garrick Ohlsson is a man for many genre seasons. The 74-year-old American classical pianist is the star performer in the next slot of the Israel Camerata Jerusalem orchestra’s 2022-23 season, with appearances scheduled at the Opera House in Tel Aviv on Sunday (8 p.m.) and at the Jerusalem Theater on Monday (8 p.m.).The evergreen artist features in the closing berth of the aptly named Musical Bridges concert.
The expansive bill incorporates the stirring “Kaddish” by Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki, who died in 2020 at the age of 87, a couple of vignettes from late 17th– to early 18th–century Italian Classical and Romantic composer Luigi Cherubini’s Requiem in D minor, and an intriguing work by Polish modernist composer and pianist Karol Szymanowski. Ohlsson takes the solo spot in the concert finale, in a rendition of Schumann’s “Piano Concerto in A minor, op. 54”.
Considering his longstanding variegated programmatic reach, Ohlsson’s inclusion in such an eclectic musical event only seems appropriate.
Over the past half-century Ohlsson has toured the world to lend his talent, technical skills, sensibilities and experience to a vast swathe of charts, addressing offerings from the likes of Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin and Schubert, to more contemporary works by American 20th-century envelope pushers, such as Copland, Griffes and Gershwin, as well as Debussy and Scriabin.
He also helps to move things along the musical evolutionary continuum by commissioning works from current composers. He says he feels privileged to be able to put new works into sonic form and introduce us to previously uncharted musical waters.
“I have done a fair amount of contemporary music in my life, not as much as some but more than others, and that is always the case,” he chuckles. The man is clearly blessed with a well-developed sense of humor.
Notwithstanding his passion for the classics from the 19th century and the kudos he has accumulated over the years for his intuitive and sensitive readings thereof, Ohlsson is far from being a stick-in-the-mud and is cognizant not only of the stylistic timeline his predecessors traveled but also aware of the need to keep the creative ball rolling.
“I think the art form needs to go on and we need to give people [in professional musical circles] a chance because after all, the composers are who give us the greatness and depth of music. You have to keep on with it because even all the music written in Beethoven’s time was not, after all, Beethoven,” he points out simply and succinctly.
“I think the art form needs to go on and we need to give people [in professional musical circles] a chance because after all, the composers are who give us the greatness and depth of music. You have to keep on with it because even all the music written in Beethoven’s time was not, after all, Beethoven.”
Garrick Ohlsson
When spelled out in words of one syllable that makes glaringly obvious sense. But we live in an age of increasing financial constraints in cultural spheres, and artistic directors of festivals and concert promoters generally have to juggle the desire to explore new areas of creativity and thereby open up new experiential vistas to the public and the pressing need to put bums on seats.
A month or so ago, International Jerusalem Chamber Music Festival honcho and celebrated pianist Elena Bashkirova expressed to me her firm belief that the works by the Beethovens, Mozarts and Bachs of this world should be presented side by side with some of the latest, edgiest and most contemporary material infused with current zeitgeist dynamism. “I think modern music should not be put in a ghetto,” she said at the time.
“It’s all just music”
Borrowing from a different musical domain, I noted that some of the greatest jazz musicians to have ever hit a bandstand I have been privileged to interview over the years have explained their predilection for dipping into diverse sonic and stylistic realms by the seemingly simple observation that “it’s all just music.”
Ohlsson is fully on board that train of thought. “In that sense, I guess I am a universalist. I would say it is all just music in the very best sense because musical principles are universal.”
PART OF that stems from having paid his professional and artistic dues, and a sense of confidence accrued across decades of classical derring-do.
“When I’m studying a piece, whether it’s by Mozart or Bartok, I no longer worry – as I used to do when I was younger – about [replicating] the sound or style of Mozart, or Bach or Bartok. First of all, I have a pretty good idea by now,” he declares, “but also an F sharp by Bartok is an F sharp by Mozart, and a crescendo is a crescendo.”
That said, all the above is up for grabs in terms of how the performer goes about imparting the base material to the audience. “A crescendo has many meanings. It can be a building of excitement, it can be a bridge passage, it can be an intensification and so on. All the things that we have in music are related.”
It is, he says, a matter of going with the flow. “Now in my maturity, I hope, I think of things like style and the sound of – how can I find the right analogy? – as the products of planting the right seed in the right ground which takes good care of it, and then the leaves come up and the tree grows, and hopefully, there are then flowers and fruit. That’s the sound, the style, or if you will, the hair-do of the music.”
That hard-earned accumulated maturity and experience has brought Ohlsson to a state of mind and approach to his craft whereby he is ready and willing to take leaps of faith, as any creator worth their salt must necessarily do.
The pianist cites an acclaimed American modernist composer to expound on the laissez-faire school of thought. “As Elliot Carter wrote, any score is a road map to a place you’ve never been before.
You have to follow it very exactly until you begin to know all the corners, all the details and you begin to feel comfortable with it.
Then, when you follow that road map very exactly, suddenly it turns into a place, and then you begin to feel more comfortable with it and here you take a little more time or you don’t, and you emphasize this or you love this chord more than that chord. You begin to make all those aesthetic decisions, consciously and unconsciously – I think both aspects are very important.”
And so it goes, across the artist’s career. “You do discover in life that you have more affinity for some works or some composers than others. I’m not going to confess which ones those are,” he adds with a laugh.
Schumann, and his “Piano Concerto in A minor”, are certainly in the Ohlsson playlist and have been for many a year.
“This is a piece I have been playing since I was 15, so it is in my hard drive,” he says. However, a wealth of professional experience and familiarity with the specific score notwithstanding, Ohlsson is always open to new ideas.
“I have studied and restudied it several times. But I think the changes that occurred [in my approach] are more organic. With each performance sometimes you rethink things a little bit or maybe more than a bit.”
Other interested parties can also come into the rendition equation. “With each conductor, I play with, there is always learning. One learns constantly from one’s colleagues. You even sometimes learn things you don’t particularly want to do,” he observes. “You think, that’s not a good idea. But you do influence each other.”
But these are tweaks and nuances. At this stage of his career, a musician of Ohlsson’s stature is not going to go back to the drawing board. “I’ve never gone through with a Schumann concerto feeling I have got it all wrong. I have to restudy it from scratch.”
A rewarding, pleasurable and heartwarming listening experience, with a consummate open-minded professional, is clearly in store for the Tel Aviv and Jerusalem audiences.
For tickets and more information, contact (02) 502-0503 and visit: www.jcamerata.com.