After a gap of several years Leif Ove Andsnes is returning to Mozart with a season packed with concerts and rounded off with a special tribute to the composer at this year’s Rosendal Festival in August.

Following a performance earlier this week in Munich of Mozart’s Piano Concerto in D minor K 466 with Andris Nelsons and the Philharmonia, Leif Ove will play the concerto again with the Vienna Philharmonic and Thomas Hengelbrock tomorrow evening at the Salzburg Mozartwoche.  Together with the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra he will perform Mozart’s Piano Concertos nos 20 and 22 on tour in March with concerts in Oslo, Geneva, La Chaux-de-Fonds, Lucerne, Basel, Amiens, London and Leeds before joining Marc-André Hamelin for a duet programme including Mozart’s Larghetto and Allego in E Flat Major which will tour throughout this Spring in Europe.  See all tour dates here.

Reviewing the Munich concert the Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote “The evening in the Gasteig Philharmonic was marked by D minor. With quite different musical Gods: Mozart and Bruckner, but with two musical performers of the same ilk: Andris Nelsons and Leif Ove Andsnes, both congenial spirits from the Nordic-Baltic musical world whose lively authenticity always impresses. And a further star in the form of the Philharmonia Orchestra from London, with a hoard of great tradition and the finest sound culture. Andsnes tempers the D minor of Mozart’s piano concerto KV 466 with an introverted drama right from the start. It is not the tragic drama of “Don Giovanni” which he presents but one with a subdued glow of excitement, always underpinned with the highest delicacy by Andris Nelsons and the London musicians. Andsnes keeps the crescendo of excitement until the cadenza but it is only in the last moment that he really lets forth, yet never departing from his impeccable intuition for Mozart’s tone.”

Source: Süddeutsche Zeitung