Leif Ove Andsnes: Mazzoli premieres with NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra & NY Philharmonic; artistic residency with NDR EO; returns to LA Philharmonic & Detroit Symphony; transatlantic solo Beethoven recital tour; & European tour with Berlin Philharmonic in 2026–27
Leif Ove Andsnes (photo: Gregor Hohenberg)
(September 2026) — The 2026–27 season sees Leif Ove Andsnes – “a pianist of magisterial elegance, power, and insight” (The New York Times) – give the world and U.S. premieres of a new piano concerto by Missy Mazzoli with the two commissioning orchestras: Hamburg’s NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra (NDR EO) and the New York Philharmonic. The Hamburg premiere forms part of the celebrated Norwegian pianist’s season-long tenure as the NDR EO’s 2026–27 Artist-in-Residence; other residency highlights include Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto in Hamburg, Budapest, and Vienna; Britten’s sole Piano Concerto; and a solo recital of Beethoven’s final three piano sonatas. This last anchors a 16-city transatlantic solo recital tour marking the 200th anniversary of the composer’s death with performances of the last three sonatas in cities including London, Berlin, Florence, Barcelona, Paris, Warsaw, Santa Barbara, Vancouver, Rockport, Chicago, and New York City, in the New York Philharmonic’s “Artist Spotlight” series. Elsewhere in concert, Andsnes returns to the Los Angeles Philharmonic for Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto and to the Detroit Symphony for Britten; plays Beethoven’s Third in London, Barcelona, and Madrid with the Philharmonia orchestra; and performs the Grieg Concerto with the Berlin Philharmonic on a European tour that includes the orchestra’s annual Europakonzert, held for the first time in Finland. He subsequently revisits the Grieg at Norway’s Bergen International Festival, where, as Artist-in-Residence of the 75th anniversary edition, he becomes the first to hold that title for a second time.
Mazzoli concerto premieres with NDR EO & New York Philharmonic
Early next year, Andsnes bring to life a new Piano Concerto, composed for him by Grammy-nominated American composer Missy Mazzoli, “Brooklyn’s post-millennial Mozart” (Time Out New York). First, as part of his season-long artistic residency with Hamburg’s NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra (NDR EO), he gives the concerto’s world premiere performance under Chief Conductor Alan Gilbert at the orchestra’s third “Elbphilharmonie Visions” festival, which offers a biennial immersion in 21st-century music (Feb 6). Next, just days later, he gives the work’s first American performances in concerts with Daniel Harding and the New York Philharmonic (Feb 11–13). The concerto is not only dedicated to Andsnes, but also draws inspiration from the sensitivity of his playing. Mazzoli explains:
“Of course, he’s incredibly virtuosic and technically dazzling – he can play anything – but there’s also this extraordinary sensitivity and quietness in his playing. At times, it makes me think more of Baroque music or Mozart than of the large Romantic piano tradition. The concerto combines those influences: there’s a lot of delicate ornamentation alongside these big, explosive chords.”
Committed to expanding the piano repertoire, Andsnes featured Norwegian composers Lene Grenager, Ketil Hvoslef, Marius Neset, Ruth Wilhelmine Meyer, and Knut Vaage as composers-in-residence during his nine seasons as the founder and artistic director of Norway’s celebrated Rosendal Chamber Music Festival. He is the dedicatee of Bent Sørensen’s The Shadows of Silence and of piano concertos by Marc-André Dalbavie and Ørjan Matre; his world premiere recordings of the first two works were recently re-released as part of the acclaimed 36-CD retrospective Leif Ove Andsnes: The Complete Warner Classics Edition (1990-2010).
Season-long artistic residency with Hamburg’s NDR EO
The Mazzoli premiere falls midway through Andsnes’s season-long tenure as 2026–27 Artist-in-Residence of Hamburg’s NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra. This fall, marking his first appearances in the multi-faceted role, he joins NDR EO musicians for quintets by Boccherini and Robert Schumann (Oct 14), before collaborating with Gilbert and the full orchestra on performances of Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto in Hamburg, Budapest, and Vienna (Oct 15–22).
After returning to the Elbphilharmonie for a solo Beethoven recital (April 15) and Grieg with the Berlin Philharmonic (May 8) during two of his European tours next spring (see below), Andsnes completes the residency with a program devised as “A Musical Playground for a Versatile Artist,” of which the first performance will stream live to home audiences worldwide. The program’s opening half showcases his solo skills in Debussy, his gift for chamber music in Poulenc, and his jazz chops in works by Norwegian saxophonist-composer Marius Neset – his collaborator on the album Who We Are – who joins him on stage to perform them. Andsnes completes the program in company with the full orchestra under the baton of his compatriot Tabita Berglund, Chief Conductor Designate of the Bergen Philharmonic, in Britten’s Piano Concerto (June 10 & 13).
Returns to LA Philharmonic & Detroit Symphony
Brahms’s and Britten’s concertos are also the vehicles for Andsnes’s returns to two major U.S. orchestras this fall. He performs Britten’s Concerto with the Detroit Symphony and – as in Hamburg – Tabita Berglund (Oct 31 & Nov 1), having previously dispatched the work “with such effortless command and penetrating clarity that every burst of arm-blurring octaves, every tangled patch of passagework, seemed both meaningful and fantastical” (The New York Times).
A week later, he joins the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Music Director Designate Daniel Harding for Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto (Nov 6–8). As the Chicago Classical Review recognized after an account of the same work, “Andsnes’s memorable Brahms blends intimacy and bravura.”
Transatlantic solo recital tour of Beethoven’s last three sonatas
Ludwig van Beethoven died on March 26, 1827. To mark the 200th anniversary of his demise, Andsnes tours the composer’s final three piano sonatas – Nos. 30 in E,
31 in A-flat, and 32 in C minor – extensively on both sides of the Atlantic. After kicking off the North American leg of his tour with a masterclass and recital in Santa Barbara, CA (March 11 & 12), he performs the three sonatas in Vancouver (March 14), Rockport, MA (March 19), Chicago (March 21), and New York City, where his recital will be presented at Lincoln Center in the New York Philharmonic’s “Artist Spotlight” series (March 16).
In Europe, he gives fall recitals of the sonatas in Harstad and Levanger, Norway (Nov 20 & 22), before reprising them at spring performances in Turin, Florence, Barcelona, Paris, Bilbao, Warsaw, and Berlin (April 1–19), as well as in Hamburg, as part of his NDR EO residency (April 15), and London, where he makes back-to-back appearances at Wigmore Hall (April 17, matinee and evening).
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.”
European tours with Berlin Philharmonic & Philharmonia
Andsnes features Beethoven’s music once again in the first of two European orchestral tours, performing the composer’s Third Piano Concerto with Esa-Pekka Salonen and London’s Philharmonia, first at the orchestra’s Royal Festival Hall home (Oct 4) and then on tour in Madrid and Barcelona (Jan 10 & 13).
Then, next spring, he joins the Berlin Philharmonic and Chief Conductor Kirill Petrenko to reprise his interpretation of Grieg’s Piano Concerto on a seven-city European tour (April 28–May 8). As well as dates in Berlin, Gothenburg, Stockholm, Aarhus, and Copenhagen, this includes the orchestra’s annual Europakonzert, held for the first time in Turku, Finland, from where it will air live worldwide (May 1), and a return to Hamburg, as part of the pianist’s NDR EO residency (May 8). Grieg’s concerto is a signature work of Andsnes’s, and his recording of the piece with the Berlin Philharmonic was recognized with a Gramophone Award.
Artistic residency at 75th Bergen International Festival
Andsnes revisits the Grieg at Norway’s Bergen International Festival, where, as Artist-in-Residence of the landmark 75th anniversary edition (May 24–June 5), he becomes the first musician to have held the title more than once – exactly 30 years after the first time, in 1997. It was even longer ago, in 1988, that Andsnes first performed Grieg’s Concerto at the festival, becoming its youngest concerto soloist to date. Now he returns to the work, this time performing on an 1881 Steinway imported from Belgium for the occasion, with the Orchestra Révolutionnaire et Romantique, one of the world’s foremost period instrument ensembles. Similarly, for quintets by Robert Schumann and Boccherini with the Chiaroscuro Quartet, he performs on a period-specific fortepiano. In addition to a wealth of masterclasses, his other festival highlights include movements from Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto with the Bergen Philharmonic at the festival-opening Jubilee Concert (May 26 & 27), and a marathon collaboration with his fellow pianists and piano students on a relay performance of Satie’s modernist piano epic, Vexations.
Spring Chopin release
This past April, Andsnes released Geirr Tveitt: Sonata No. 29, Folk Tunes and Songs, leading The New York Times to proclaim Tveitt “one of the most prominent and original voices in Norwegian music since Edvard Grieg,” and French daily Libération to pronounce the album “undoubtedly one of the most beautiful CDs by the Norwegian pianist.”
Spring 2027 brings Andsnes’s next solo release: an all-Chopin album from Sony Classical, featuring his interpretation of the poetic 24 Preludes alongside eight Mazurkas and a Tarantelle. After hearing the 24 Preludes live in concert, the Minnesota Star Tribune wrote: “Andsnes made them a fascinating odyssey, an expertly articulated compendium of myriad emotions and moods delivered with technical precision and heartfelt expressiveness.” As for his most recent previous recording devoted to the Polish composer, Andsnes’s Chopin: Ballades & Nocturnes was named one of the “Best Classical Albums of 2018” (WQXR) and nominated for an International Classical Music Award.
Leif Ove Andsnes: 2026–27 engagements
Sep 9 & 10
Stavanger, Norway
Stavanger Symphony Orchestra / Dinis Sousa
BRAHMS: Piano Concerto No. 2
Sep 15–19
Tour of France & Italy with Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra / Dmitri Slobodeniouk
Sep 15: Merano, Italy
Sep 16: Verona, Italy
Sep 18: Besançon, France
Sep 19: Dijon, France
BRAHMS: Piano Concerto No. 2
Sep 24
Bergen, Norway
Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra / Rasmus Hella Mikkelsen
BRAHMS: Piano Concerto No. 2
Oct 4
London, UK
Royal Festival Hall
Philharmonia / Esa-Pekka Salonen
BEETHOVEN: Piano Concerto No. 3
Oct 14
Hamburg, Germany
Elbphilharmonie (NDR EO Artist-in-Residence)
BOCCHERINI, R. SCHUMANN, and others: chamber music TBA (with NDR EO musicians)
Oct 15–22
European Tour with NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra / Alan Gilbert (NDR EO Artist-in-Residence)
Oct 15, 16, & 18: Hamburg, Germany
Oct 21: Budapest, Hungary
Oct 22: Vienna, Austria
BRAHMS: Piano Concerto No. 2
Oct 31 & Nov 1
Detroit, MI
Detroit Symphony Orchestra / Tabita Berglund
BRITTEN: Piano Concerto
Nov 6–8
Los Angeles, CA
LA Philharmonic / Daniel Harding
BRAHMS: Piano Concerto No. 2
Nov 20 & 22
Norwegian solo recitals
Nov 20: Harstad, Norway
Nov 22: Levanger, Norway
BEETHOVEN: Piano Sonata No. 30 in E, Op. 109
BEETHOVEN: Piano Sonata No. 31 in A-flat, Op. 110
BEETHOVEN: Piano Sonata No. 32 in C minor, Op. 111
Nov 27
Helsinki, Finland
Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra/ Constantinos Carydis
GRIEG: Piano Concerto
Dec 2
Stavanger, Norway
Stavanger Symphony Orchestra
TBA (with Lise Davidsen, soprano)
Dec 5
Oslo, Norway
Norwegian Radio Orchestra
TBA (with Lise Davidsen, soprano)
Dec 10 & 12
Vienna Symphony / Elim Chan
BRITTEN: Piano Concerto
Jan 10 & 13
Spanish Tour with Philharmonia / Esa-Pekka Salonen
Jan 10: Madrid, Spain
Jan 13: Barcelona, Spain
BEETHOVEN: Piano Concerto No. 3
Feb 6
Hamburg, Germany
NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra / Alan Gilbert (NDR EO Artist-in-Residence)
“Elbphilharmonie Visions” festival
Missy MAZZOLI: Piano Concerto (world premiere of NDR EO co-commission)
Feb 11–13
New York, NY
New York Philharmonic / Daniel Harding
Missy MAZZOLI: Piano Concerto (American premiere of NDR EO co-commission)
March 2
Nijmegen, Netherlands
Solo recital
March 11
Santa Barbara, CA
University of California, Santa Barbara
Masterclass
March 12–21:
North American solo recital tour
March 12: Santa Barbara, CA
March 14: Vancouver, Canada
March 16: New York, NY (New York Philharmonic’s “Artist Spotlight”)
March 19: Rockport, MA
March 21: Chicago, IL
BEETHOVEN: Piano Sonata No. 30 in E, Op. 109
BEETHOVEN: Piano Sonata No. 31 in A-flat, Op. 110
BEETHOVEN: Piano Sonata No. 32 in C minor, Op. 111
April 1–19:
European solo recital tour
April 1: Turin, Italy
April 3: Florence, Italy
April 5: Barcelona, Spain
April 7: Paris, France
April 9: Bilbao, Spain
April 11: Warsaw, Poland
April 15: Hamburg, Germany (Elbphilharmonie; NDR EO Artist-in-Residence)
April 17m & 17: London, UK (Wigmore Hall)
April 19: Berlin, Germany
BEETHOVEN: Piano Sonata No. 30 in E, Op. 109
BEETHOVEN: Piano Sonata No. 31 in A-flat, Op. 110
BEETHOVEN: Piano Sonata No. 32 in C minor, Op. 111
April 28–May 8:
European tour with Berlin Philharmonic / Kirill Petrenko
April 28: Berlin, Germany
May 1: Turku, Finland
May 2: Gothenburg, Sweden
May 3: Stockholm, Sweden
May 5: Aarhus, Denmark
May 6: Copenhagen, Denmark
May 8: Hamburg, Germany (Elbphilharmonie; NDR EO Artist-in-Residence)
GRIEG: Piano Concerto
May 24–June 5
Bergen, Norway
75th Bergen International Festival (Artist-in-Residence)
May 24 & 25: masterclasses
May 26 & 27: Jubilee Concert with Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra
BEETHOVEN: movements II & III from Piano Concerto No. 4
May 29 & 30: Chamber concerts with Chiaroscuro Quartet
BOCCHERINI & R. SCHUMANN: chamber music TBA
May 30–June 1: masterclasses
June 3 & 4: concerts with Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique
GRIEG: Piano Concerto
June 5: Piano Marathon
SATIE: Vexations (with multiple pianists)
June 10 (with livestream) & 13
Hamburg, Germany
NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra / Tabita Berglund (NDR EO Artist-in-Residence)
DEBUSSY: La cathédrale engloutie for solo piano solo
Marius NESET: Chaconne for piano and saxophone (with Marius Neset, saxophone)
Marius NESET: Prague’s Ballet for piano, saxophone, & cello (with Marius Neset, saxophone; NDR EO musician, cello)
POULENC: Sextet for piano and winds
BRITTEN: Piano Concerto