We’ve been looking back at some landmark CBC recordings featuring great Canadians who have enjoyed international careers in the classical music world. This week, we’re listening to pianist Arthur Ozolins.
Ozolins was born in 1946 to Latvian parents in a camp for displaced persons in Lübeck, Germany. When he was just a toddler, the family moved to Argentina, one of the only countries to admit refugees after the Second World War. His mother, who had been a concert pianist in Latvia, gave him his first lessons. She died when Arthur was six and, because his father was unable to look after the boys, Arthur and his brother were placed in an orphanage. After six years, they were reunited with their father who was living in the slums of Buenos Aires.
In 1958, a family friend arranged for the Ozolins to move to Canada where Arthur began lessons with Alberto Guerrero and his father found work as a janitor. Three years later, Ozolins made his professional debut with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Since then he's performed with that orchestra more often than any other pianist.
Ozolins later studied at the University of Toronto, spent a year in Paris working with Nadia Boulanger, then finished his education at the Mannes College of Music in New York. In 1967 Ozolins won the CBC Talent Festival and launched an impressive international concert and recording career. He's circled the globe again and again, touring South America twice; the Soviet Union seven times. He's played with the great orchestras of Europe and North America and has given dozens of solo recitals across Canada.
"I give everything of myself when I perform," he said. "I have sacrificed my personal life in order to be able to make music."
Ozolins is probably best known as an interpreter of Rachmaninoff (he'll play Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3 with the Etobicoke Philharmonic later this season). But he's also shown a keen interest in Canadian composers.
Back in 1991 he made this recording of the Healey Willan Piano Concerto with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Mario Bernardi. Willan, an Anglo-Canadian organist and composer, made his name composing rather formal liturgical works for the Anglican Church, so it's fascinating to hear this virtuosic concerto written in 1944 in a late-romantic style reminiscent of Rachmaninoff. Listen here to Ozolins performing Willan, both immigrants to Canada who found sanctuary and success through music:
Willan Piano Concerto, first movement.
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