With Garrick Ohlsson, there's always something new

By the time most performing artists reach their late 50s, it's not unusual for them to settle into a routine. It's not that they necessarily get worse; it's that they tend to deliver the same fine performance over and over in different cities.

That has never happened to pianist Garrick Ohlsson, who is still knocking 'em dead at 58. Every time Ohlsson comes to Seattle, where he has been a regular and much-favored guest for the past 34 years, he shows audiences something new. He's one of a handful of players who is more interesting every time you hear him.

Now Ohlsson is scheduled to return to Meany Theater, the scene of many past triumphs, for the second program of the 2006-07 President's Piano Series at 8 p.m. Tuesday. It should be quite an event. The program is a choice one: Liszt's only piano sonata, a monster-size work that takes a master's hand to interpret, plus one of Prokofiev's most exciting sonatas (the No. 7). Ohlsson also plays an early Beethoven Sonata (Op. 10, No. 1) and a Chopin Nocturne, with a venture into contemporary music with the Lowell Liebermann Nocturne No. 8.

In Ohlsson's last Seattle appearance — just last May, in a Seattle Symphony "Specials" program — he played two great piano romantic-era concerti (the Schumann and the Rachmaninoff No. 2) in a pair of performances that set the audience afire. There's just something about his utter technical command and his expressive playing that makes almost every listener a fan. Ohlsson is a big guy, and when he sits down to the keyboard, he asserts a total mastery over the keyboard that cuts a 9-foot concert grand right down to size.

"I still get incredibly wound up about music," he told The Times prior to a 2004 performance here.

"I do like pushing myself, which may sound goody-goody, but I love to get into new areas of a piece and repertoire. It's why people climb Mount Everest. You have to raise the bar constantly. You just have to play better, you have no choice. I love to challenge myself.

"Growth is a very important thing to me. Standing still is not very interesting."

Ohlsson, who grew up in White Plains, N.Y., discovered the piano at 8 and at 13 was already at the Juilliard School of Music in New York City. Among his teachers were Claudio Arrau and Rosina Lhevinne, and he soon began winning prizes: the 1966 Busoni Competition and the 1968 Montreal Competition, though his career really took off when he won the 1970 Chopin International Competition. He also was awarded the 1994 Avery Fisher Prize.

His musical tastes verge on the voracious: solo repertoire of nearly every era, lots of chamber music with some of the world's great string quartets, and a chamber trio in San Francisco, where he lives (fittingly, it is called FOG, the acronym of violinist Jorja Fleezanis, Ohlsson and cellist Michael Grebanier).

For President's Piano Series tickets, call 206-543-4880 or go to www.uwworldseries.org.

Norwegian alert

In this region full of Scandinavians, there should be more than the usual interest in the Seattle Symphony debut of Norwegian conductor Arild Remmereit, who leads the orchestra this weekend in selections from Grieg's "Peer Gynt" — along with Schumann's "Spring" Symphony (No. 1). The evening's soloist is the orchestra's principal bassoon, the excellent Seth Krimsky, who is heard in John Williams' concerto, "The Five Sacred Trees."

Concert times are 8 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday in Benaroya Hall (206-215-4747 or www.seattlesymphony.org).

Melinda Bargreen: mbargreen@seattletimes.com