Marathon man

LENOX -- Practice. That's what Garrick Ohlsson always tells the younger players. It is not sexy advice. It is, however, the truth. From snapping off triple trills to sweating through the simplest passage, practice is the great separator.

The upstarts listen when he talks and watch in awe when he performs. They're eager to learn from the man who, were he to play straight through the works he has memorized over the years, wouldn't stop for days.

``I just had a recital, and I had music in front of me, and it took me two months to prepare," moans Brent Besner , a clarinetist from Canada standing in Seiji Ozawa Hall on a July afternoon. ``He can probably whip this off in a week."

He's just watched Ohlsson perform the second of eight -- yes, eight -- Beethoven programs scheduled for this season at Tanglewood. They form an ambitious 32-sonata Beethoven cycle, an unprecedented feat in Tanglewood history. He's playing entirely from memory.

An hour later, over a glass of wine and a swordfish fillet at Cafe Lucia, the pianist, a bear of a man who stands 6-foot-4, smiles when told of Besner's comment.

``If only that were true," says Ohlsson. ``No, it goes back to that old joke. `How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice.' "

He is tired on this night, yet still going. In a week, he will take on the most challenging of the sonatas, the 45-minute ``Hammerklavier," a heartbreaking, rhythmically challenging work that he half dreads performing. It's so draining. And even when that concert, the fourth in the series, is over, Ohlsson will know he is only halfway there.

HEAR MORE FROM GARRICK OHLSSON

Check out an audio slideshow and audio interview at www.boston.com/ae/theater_arts.

He hesitated when first asked to take on the Beethoven cycle. That was 2004; he was invited to play the cycle at the Verbier Festival in Switzerland. Ohlsson took stock of what he knew by heart -- about 26 of the sonatas -- and whether he might be able to learn the remaining six to his liking. He also considered the tight schedule proposed at Verbier, eight concerts over 17 days.

In the end, he took it on.

``I had to say to myself, `Self, you're 56. If you're not ready now, when are you going to be ready?' " he says.

Ohlsson's career had built to this moment. In 1970, as a 22-year-old Juilliard graduate from White Plains, N.Y., he'd captured the Chopin International Piano Competition in Warsaw -- he was the first American awarded the gold medal. Dates rolled in, and Ohlsson made his debut at Tanglewood in 1971.

He became best known for his Chopin, eventually recording the composer's entire solo works. Then in 1978 he began contemplating the Beethoven cycle. As always, his mission would be to show how the music, now considered traditional and not daring by some, was actually riskier than almost anything written in its day. The Beethoven sonatas had been played by so many of his favorites -- Artur Schnabel, Claudio Arrau, Sviatoslav Richter. To match them, Ohlsson determined, he would need to start then, and work on roughly a sonata a year.

He was almost there when Verbier called.

``If I hadn't been playing so much of it for the last 25 years, I'd have just had to say no," Ohlsson recalls. ``Still, never in my life had I played eight different programs in 2 1/2 weeks. It was insane."

Tony Fogg, the Boston Symphony Orchestra's artistic administrator, got excited about Ohlsson's plans. The Beethoven cycle had never been done at Tanglewood. If Ohlsson did it there, the BSO would be turning over half of the typical 15- or 16-recital schedule to one artist.

``It's a huge amount of work," says Fogg. ``And the only person around here who is keeping that much music in his head is Jimmy."

That would be BSO conductor James Levine, whose intense work schedule is virtually unmatched in the classical music world. Levine says he is unimpressed by the physical challenge of Ohlsson's task. ``If you're a pianist, this is what you do," he says. But as a concert-level pianist in his own right, Levine says it's important to play the cycle. ``You are doing something that strikes you on a lot more levels than playing random dates," he says. ``It's one of the very large cycles, but it's been done by every serious Beethoven pianist."

In Lenox, Ohlsson gets as many as three days between performances. That doesn't mean he's on vacation.

``Somebody asked me, `Have you been to Jacob's Pillow?' Have you been here?' I don't have time," Ohlsson says. ``I'm not complaining. It's exhilarating. It's just that this is not easy."

He and his longtime partner, writer Bob Guter, have been put up by the BSO in an L-shaped ranch house just over 2 miles from the Tanglewood campus. In the main room, Ohlsson works on a Steinway ``B," the next size down from a concert grand.

On the day of the intense ``Hammerklavier," Ohlsson almost didn't want to go on. The piece demanded so much, from slowly massaged melodies to violent, dissonant passages. During the performance, Ohlsson, expressive but not a ham onstage, partially rose off the piano bench to accentuate particularly powerful chords.

``I was immensely happy, but the space in time to allow yourself to be happy, in this situation, is short," he reflects the next day. ``I can't just put up my feet and bask in this. I've got to work."

That's the message he also passes on at a Tanglewood master class, one of two he agreed to lead during the summer. Inside a rustic wooden chamber music hall, he listens to three young pianists work through sonatas.

After the passages, Ohlsson calms the players' nerves. He blends practical advice with humor and anecdotes. He does a killer mock Russian accent to imitate his former Juilliard instructor, Rosina Lhevinne . He sits at the piano, overplaying louder sections sloppily on purpose, to highlight the contrasts in a piece.

The pianists are amazed. They've been preparing for weeks to play for him. They nod, answer questions, and awkwardly bow when leaving the stage. At the end of the two-hour class, they approach Ohlsson, who is standing at the front of the room, sweat spots soaking through his golf shirt.

Angelina Gadeliya , a 28-year-old originally from the Ukraine, considers Ohlsson's Beethoven schedule ``inhuman."

``Do you have any secrets?" she asks him.

He smiles and doesn't hesitate.

``Practice," he tells her. ``It's the same way you get to Carnegie Hall."

Geoff Edgers can be reached at gedgers@globe.com.