John Hendrickson

Hendrickson, John

John (Henry) Hendrickson. Pianist, b Montreal 11 Apr 1956; AMA 1973, LMA 1973. A pupil of Susan Howard, Robert Pounder, and Alexandra Munn in Edmonton, he also studied with Irwin Freundlich in New York. He made his debut with the Edmonton Youth Symphony in the fall of 1969. He was co-winner in the 1972 Young Pianists' International Competition at Buffalo, NY, was the highest-ranked North American in the 1973 Van Cliburn Competition, and won the Warsaw Critics' Prize at the 1975 International Chopin Competition. He placed third in the 1976 Montreal International Competition, in which he won a special award for his performance of the set piece (Jacques Hétu's Fantaisie). Hendrickson has given solo recitals, has appeared with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra and with the Krakow, Lublin, and Warsaw Philharmonics in Poland, and has been heard over CBC radio (with the CBC Vancouver Chamber Orchestra) and Radio Poland. His repertoire includes concertos by Bartok, Beethoven, Chopin, Gershwin, Mozart, Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff, Ravel, Schumann, and Tchaikovsky. He has recorded for the Polish label Muza. After a recital at Canada House in London, David Murray described Hendrickson's style as 'individual... chunky, masculine and yet permitting any amount of sensitive detail' and noted that his performance 'was enough to prove that his great technical security answers to a rigorous musical intelligence' (Financial Times, 26 Mar 1980).