When Leif Ove Andsnes featured the sole surviving piano sonata by his compatriot Geirr Tveitt at New York’s Carnegie Hall, The New York Times chose his recital as one of the “Best Classical Performances of 2025.” Now, Andsnes complements the sonata with a selection of the composer’s piano pieces and songs on Geirr Tveitt: Sonata No. 29, Folk Tunes and Songs, due for physical and digital release on Norway’s Simax label on April 24.
Although Geirr Tveitt (1908–81) was one of the 20th century’s most distinctive and prolific Norwegian composers, today his music is seldom heard outside his homeland. This owes in no small part to the devastating 1970 house fire that destroyed almost 300 of his compositions – about eighty percent of his total output – and left him struggling to compose for the remainder of his life. Keen to share Tveitt’s music with a wider audience, Andsnes has regularly championed his countryman’s work over the past two seasons, giving many live performances of Sonata No. 29, “Sonata etere” (Ethereal Sonata), the only piano sonata to escape the fire, which Andsnes considers “the most ambitious solo piano piece by a Norwegian composer.” He explains:
“The ‘Sonata etere’ is a gigantic piece of music built on two simple melodies with many variations. It is a tough piece to play, but very rewarding. With Russian rhythmic influences combined with touches of French music and folk music, Tveitt really is in a world all his own. His sonata is fantastically colorful in its writing for the instrument, full of tension in its architecture, harmony, and rhythm.”
Listeners have been quick to recognize the pianist’s way with Tveitt’s music. After his account of the “Sonata etere” at London’s Wigmore Hall, The Guardian pronounced Andsnes “an insightful champion” of the work. Likewise, characterizing the sonata as one “that alchemizes modernist experimentation and folk memory into shimmering, spectral soundscapes,” The New York Times found Andsnes’s Carnegie Hall performance of the piece “unexpectedly moving.”
Andsnes has now committed this interpretation to disc. April 24 brings the release by Simax of Geirr Tveitt: Sonata No. 29, Folk Tunes and Songs, on which he complements the sonata with several of Tveitt’s songs and a selection of piano pieces from the composer’s Femti folkatonar frao Hardanger (“Fifty Folktunes from Hardanger”). For the songs – settings of Norwegian verse that fuse modernist harmonies with folk elements – Andsnes will accompany his sister, soprano Solveig Andsnes. As detailed below, three singles are being issued in advance of the album release: one of the Songs (March 20); “What beer!” from Fifty Folk Tunes (April 10); and the opening movement of the sonata, released earlier this month and available now for streaming.