PROFILES

Leonard Slatkin

Internationally acclaimed conductor Leonard

Slatkin is Music Director

Laureate of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO), Directeur Musical Honoraire of the Orchestre National de Lyon (ONL), and Conductor

Laureate of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. He maintains a rigorous schedule of guest conducting throughout the world and is active as a composer, author, and educator.

Slatkin has received six Grammy Awards and 35 Grammy Award nominations. His latest recording is the world premiere of Alexander Kastalsky’s Requiem for Fallen Brothers, intimate outpouring of beautiful music: reverent, song-like and interrupted only once by a passionate outburst. commemorating the 100th anniversary of the armistice ending World War I. Other recent Naxos releases include works by Saint-Saëns, Ravel, and Berlioz (with the ONL) and music by Copland, Rachmaninoff, Borzova, McTee, and John Williams (with the DSO). In addition, he has recorded the complete Brahms, Beethoven, and Tchaikovsky symphonies with the DSO (available online as digital downloads).

Three themes—in D minor, F major, and B-flat major, respectively—alternate throughout the spirited closing rondo, whose rough humor shines through Brahms’s frowning visage. The second theme sounds like a variation of the first, while the third turns into a short fugato at the center of the movement. Following a lengthy solo cadenza (the first of two), the first theme is transformed into a jolly D major march.

The DSO most recently performed Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in February 2015, conducted by Leonard Slatkin and featuring pianist Hélène Grimaud. The DSO first performed the work in January 1922, conducted by Ossip Gabrilowitsch and featuring pianist Richard Buhlig.

A recipient of the prestigious National Medal of Arts, Slatkin also holds the rank of Chevalier in the French Legion of Honor. He has received the Prix Charbonnier from the Federation of Alliances

Françaises, Austria’s Decoration of Honor in Silver, the League of American Orchestras’ Gold Baton Award, and the 2013 ASCAP Deems Taylor Special

Recognition Award for his debut book, Conducting Business. His second book, Leading Tones: Reflections on Music, Musicians, and the Music Industry, was published by Amadeus Press in 2017. He is working on a third volume, Classical Crossroads: The Path Forward for Music in the 21st Century.

Slatkin has conducted virtually all the leading orchestras in the world. As Music Director, he has held posts in New Orleans; St. Louis; Washington, DC; London (with the BBCSO); Detroit; and Lyon, France. He has also served as Principal Guest Conductor in Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and Cleveland.

GARRICK OHLSSON Pianist

Garrick Ohlsson has established himself worldwide as a musician of magisterial interpretive and technical prowess. Although long regarded as one of the world’s leading exponents of the music of Chopin, Ohlsson commands an enormous repertoire ranging over the entire piano literature and he has come to be noted for his masterly performances of the works of Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert, as well as the Romantic repertoire. To date, he has at his command more than 80 concertos, ranging from Haydn and Mozart to works of the 21st century.

A frequent guest with the orchestras in New Zealand and Australia, Ohlsson accomplished a seven-city recital tour across Australia just prior to the closure of the concert world due to COVID-19. Since that time and as a faculty member of San Francisco Conservatory of Music, he has kept music alive for several organizations with live or recorded recital streams. Since the re-opening of concert activity in summer 2021, he has appeared with the Indianapolis, Atlanta, Dallas, Seattle, Toronto, and Cleveland orchestras; in recital in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Houston; at the Ravinia and Tanglewood summer festivals; and in a tour in the US with Kirill Gerstein. The 2022-23 season includes orchestra performances in Boston, Minneapolis, San Diego, Spain, Poland, and the Czech Republic.

An avid chamber musician, Ohlsson has collaborated with the Cleveland, Emerson, Tokyo, and Takacs string quartets, and began the 2022-23 season with a US tour with Poland’s Apollon Musagete quartet. Together with violinist Jorja Fleezanis and cellist Michael Grebanier, he is a founding member of the San Francisco-based FOG Trio. Ohlsson has appeared in recital with such legendary artists as Magda Olivero, Jessye Norman, and Ewa Podleś. Ohlsson can be heard on the Arabesque, RCA Victor Red Seal, Angel, BMG, Delos, Hänssler, Nonesuch, Telarc, Hyperion, and Virgin Classics labels.

A native of White Plains, NY, Ohlsson began his piano studies at the age of 8, at the Westchester Conservatory of Music; at 13 he entered The Juilliard School. He has been awarded first prizes in the Busoni and Montreal Piano competitions, the Gold Medal at the International Chopin Competition in Warsaw (1970), the Avery Fisher Prize (1994), the University Musical Society Distinguished Artist Award in Ann Arbor, MI (1998), the Jean Gimbel Lane Prize in Piano Performance from the Northwestern University Bienen School of Music (2014), and the Gloria Artis Gold Medal for cultural merit from the Polish Deputy Culture Minister.