Pianist Andsnes tours North America in January 2009
Leif Ove Andsnes, Norway’s international
piano star, returns to North America in January. For the first time in a decade, he will play Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3,
with which he opens his North American tour at Washington’s National Symphony Orchestra (January
15, 16, and 17). The following
week he plays the magnificent warhorse again, this time with the Cleveland
Orchestra (January 22, 23, and 24).
Andsnes recorded the grandly scaled concerto with the Oslo Philharmonic
Orchestra and Paavo Berglund in 1995, quite early in his career, and gave his
first international concerts on the strength of its success. EMI’s reissue of the CD in its “Great
Recordings of the Century” series (in 2006, when the pianist’s
Grammy-Award-nominated disc of Rachmaninoff’s first and second concertos was
released) was greeted with unanimous praise.
Andsnes has been described by San
Francisco’s Chronicle as “a probing
musical analyst as well as an interpreter of enormous technical panache and
poetic nuance,” and he launches a recital
tour in that city with his frequent chamber music partner Christian Tetzlaff on January 27. Additional performances follow in
Vancouver, Los Angeles, Boston, Princeton NJ, and New York, where the two close
in Carnegie Hall on February 2 (details below). Their tour program will feature music by Mozart, Brahms,
Janácek, and Schubert.
Leif Ove Andsnes and Christian Tetzlaff have performed
together all over the world, most recently in Europe this past summer. Following their performances together
in London in April 2005, Londons’s Independent
was left “wondering whether there was any more versatile, searching, and
sheerly musical violin-and-piano partnership before the public today,” while
the Daily Telegraph called the
Andsnes/Tetzlaff duo “a musical partnership of
compelling intensity and insight.”
When the two performed the same program a month later at
Carnegie Hall, ClassicsToday
reported, “The artistry of violinist Christian Tetzlaff and pianist Leif Ove
Andsnes was in plentiful evidence during an exhilarating program of four
sonatas spanning two centuries of duo masterpieces.” Reviewing a recording they made together for Virgin
Classics, the San Francisco Chronicle wrote, “It’s not so hard to play Bartók’s music with all its gritty, dissonant
urgency intact. The trick is to
combine all that with the rhapsodic lyricism that underlies even the composer’s
most aggressive writing. That’s
the glory of this new disc by German violinist Christian Tetzlaff and Norwegian
pianist Leif Ove Andsnes. These
two have been recital collaborators for years, but rarely have their distinct
personalities – Tetzlaff’s edgy, vigorous approach and Andsnes’s more
reflective demeanor – meshed to such gorgeous effect.”
An exclusive EMI Classics
recording artist for more than 15 years, Leif Ove Andsnes has made two CDs of Mozart piano concertos. On the newer disc, he plays Concertos
Nos. 17 and 20, conducting the
Norwegian Chamber Orchestra from the keyboard. This release has received a Grammy Award nomination. Reviewing the CD last June, the New York Times stated:
“This second installment …
builds on the best qualities of the earlier disc, and broadens Mr. Andsnes’s
Mozartean palette as his readings move briskly from the elegant cheerfulness of
the G-major Concerto (No. 17) to the more ominous, grandly theatrical gestures
of the almost operatic Concerto in D minor (No. 20). In
both works, Mr. Andsnes’s playing is clean, bright, and sharply articulated in
the fast movements, more rounded but equally well defined in the slow
ones. The attraction of his
phrasing is its capacity to surprise, through reconsiderations of color or
texture, or fresh touches that afford an immediate sense of a movement’s
character … . Mr. Andsnes’s conducting shares the spirit of his pianism.”
Andsnes’s performance of Mozart’s
Concerto No. 17 with the Cleveland Orchestra, recorded live at Carnegie Hall’s
opening night 2007, is now widely available on DVD.
In April 2009, EMI Classics will
release Leif Ove Andsnes’s new recording of the piano concerto composed for him
by Marc-André Dalbavie, which the
artist performed for the first time at the 2006 BBC Proms, to enormous
acclaim. It is coupled with Witold Lutoslawski’s 1988 piano
concerto, composed for Krystian Zimerman, and solo works by Sorensen
and Kurtág. The album’s title track, Shadows of Silence, is by
Danish composer Bent
Sorensen (b. 1958) and was commissioned by Carnegie Hall for performance by
Andsnes in the venue’s 2004-05 “Perspectives” series. Rounding out the album are selections from Játékok (Games) by
Hungarian composer György Kurtág. The Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra
and Franz Welser-Möst join Andsnes in the two piano concertos, both recorded
live.
For additional information, visit: www.andsnes.com.
# # #
LEIF OVE
ANDSNES: North American tour dates,
January-FEBRUARY 2009
Orchestral concerts –
RACHMANINOFF: Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, Op. 30
Thurs, Jan 15; Fri, Jan 16; Sat,
Jan 17
Washington DC – National Symphony Orchestra / Ilan
Volkov (Kennedy Center)
Thurs, Jan 22; Fri, Jan 23; Sat,
Jan 24
Cleveland OH – Cleveland Orchestra / Franz Welser-Möst
(Severance Hall)
Recital tour with violinist Christian Tetzlaff (program below)
San
Francisco, CA – Tues, Jan 27 (Herbst Theatre)
Vancouver, BC – Wed, Jan 28 (Chan Centre)
Los Angeles, CA – Thurs, Jan 29 (Walt Disney Concert Hall)
Boston, MA – Sat, Jan 31 (Jordan Hall)
Princeton, NJ – Sun, Feb 1 (McCarter Theatre)
New York, NY – Mon, Feb 2 (Carnegie Hall)
LEOS JANÁCEK: Sonata
for Violin and Piano
JOHANNES BRAHMS: Violin
Sonata No. 3 in D minor, Op. 108
WOLFGANG AMADEUS
MOZART: Violin Sonata in F major, K. 377
FRANZ SCHUBERT:
Rondo in B minor, D. 895, “Rondo Brilliant”