Early next year, celebrated Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes embarks on a US solo recital tour, performing works by Schumann, Janáček, and Kurtág at New York’s Carnegie Hall (Jan 27) and in Athens, GA (Jan 21), Seattle (Jan 23), Stanford (Jan 25), and the Boston Celebrity Series (Jan 30). He returns to the States in the spring for accounts of Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto with the Atlanta Symphony (March 5–7) and Chicago Symphony (March 12–14). Beethoven’s Third is also the vehicle for dates with the London Symphony Orchestra, Bamberg Symphony, Danish National Symphony, and other ensembles in Europe, where additional highlights include the world premiere of a new concerto by Norway’s Ørjan Matre with the Oslo Philharmonic.
US Solo Recital Tour
Andsnes’s upcoming tour program combines two East European works with two by Robert Schumann, whose 4 Klavierstücke and Carnaval flank the first book of Janáček’s On an Overgrown Path and selections from György Kurtág’s vast ongoing collection of playful miniatures, Játékok (“Games”).
Music by all three composers has featured in Andsnes’s live performances and recordings for many years. As a former student of the renowned Czech teacher Jiří Hlinka, Andsnes has long impressed critics with his “resonance with Czech music” (Seen and Heard International), especially his “style and mastery” (Bachtrack) in Janáček. Having worked directly with György Kurtág, whom he considers “a unique composer and a fabulous musician,” Andsnes recently joined fellow pianist Chamayou for “beautifully shaped and vivid” (The Guardian) accounts of solos and duets from Játékok at London’s Wigmore Hall. As for Schumann, at a season-opening recital capped by Carnaval at Montreal’s Bourgie Hall this past September, Andsnes “gave a commanding performance, … meticulously putting down layer after layer of sound to create grand-scale tableaus with a clear vision for the finished canvas.” As MyScena’s review concluded: “This recital was the first of Bourgie Hall’s Outstanding Pianists series, and the verdict was that Andsnes was, in fact, outstanding.”
Beethoven 3 in Atlanta, Chicago, London, & beyond
Andsnes revisits Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto with orchestras on both sides of the Atlantic in the spring. In the States, he joins the Atlanta Symphony and Music Director Nathalie Stutzmann for three performances (March 5–7), of which the second will stream live to home audiences in the orchestra’s “Behind the Curtain” series (March 6). Next, after giving a sold-out solo recital in the Skyline Piano Artist Series at Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music (March 9), he reprises the concerto with Jakub Hrůša and the Chicago Symphony (March 12–14). Andsnes’s previous collaborations with the orchestra include season-opening performances of the Grieg concerto in 2019, when the Chicago Sun Times reported:
“The pianist delivered nothing shy of a definitive performance of this ever-popular masterpiece, playing with poetic elegance, unyielding clarity and nuanced touch. Never overselling or pushing too hard, he conveyed the innate romanticism and beauty of this music.”
Bookending the pianist’s high-profile U.S. engagements are performances of Beethoven’s Third with no fewer than seven European orchestras: Sweden’s Gothenburg Symphony (Jan 9 & 10), Italy’s Filarmonica della Scala (March 30), the Danish National Symphony (April 30 & May 1), Portugal’s Gulbenkian Orchestra (May 7 & 8), Germany’s Bamberg Symphony (May 22 & 23), France’s Orchestre National de Lyon (June 11 & 13), and the London Symphony Orchestra, where he reunites with Stutzmann (May 14).
Beethoven’s music has been a central focus of Andsnes’s career for many years. The Beethoven Journey, his recording of the composer’s complete music for piano and orchestra, was chosen as one of The New York Times’s “Best of 2014” and recognized with BBC Music Magazine’s “2015 Recording of the Year Award.” Similarly, his live performances of complete Beethoven concerto cycles at Carnegie Hall and London’s BBC Proms were chosen among the “Best of 2015” by The New York Times and The Guardian respectively. About his accounts of Beethoven’s First and Third Piano Concertos, Gramophone writes:
“These performances are not simply about élan and energy: they have a sense of gravitas, too, of rightness, that you find in the greatest Beethoven interpreters… . This isn’t something that is achieved by big, ballsy playing but rather by a sense of balance, of musicality, of understanding not only the notes themselves but the wider context – where these pieces stand within Beethoven’s output and a broader historical perspective, too.”
Photo: Helge Hansen