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Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes has risen to the top ranks of pianists by bringing his brilliant technique and insight to the 19th-century piano repertoire. He's a well-known proponent of his countryman Edvard Grieg's music, having recorded selected "Lyric Pieces" and the A minor concerto. Andsnes has also recorded two of Schubert's sonatas, D. 850 in D major and D. 959 in A major, that displayed his probing style to powerful effect. He paired each sonata with Lieder sung by tenor Ian Bostridge; the duo is distinguished by their teamwork and the self-effacement of both musicians. Andsnes has also committed stylish interpretations of Chopin's sonatas to disc. He performed and recorded Szymanowski's tour-de-force "Symphony No. 4" with Sir Simon Rattle and the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. This busy Norwegian pianist, with violist Lars Anders Tomter, also organizes the annual Risør Festival of Chamber Music in Norway, which brings musicians to an idyllic village and focuses on a particular composer throughout the week. GREAT PERFORMANCES spoke to him from Norway after this year's festival.
GREAT PERFORMANCES: How did this idea of getting all these pianists together at the Verbier Festival come about?
Leif Ove Andsnes: It was a suggestion from the Festival. I guess it was also the Steinway and Sons idea for their 150-year anniversary; they sponsored the whole event; they delivered the pianos for the event. Martin Engstroem, the Verbier Festival's director, came up with the idea, I think.
GP: When you get eight instrumentalists together, you usually have chamber music. But it seems that it's different with eight pianos.
LOA: Well, it's very difficult. It's a different thing, because it's fun playing with two pianos. It becomes difficult with three, and it's very difficult with eight! (Laughs.) The distance [between instruments] makes it hard to play together. We thought that playing in a circle would be the best way, but the audience could not see us very well. So we were playing in a half circle, with Mikhail Pletnev on one side and me on the other. Rehearsals were frustrating with the distance, but it became fun by the performance.
Pianists get to play with a lot of other musicians, string players and so on, but rarely with other pianists, so it was great to meet other colleagues.
GP: You aren't known for playing this sort of virtuoso music. Was it a challenge for you to play in this style?
LOA: No, because I've played a lot of virtuoso pieces. It was in alphabetical order [the assignment of parts], so I was playing Piano 1, so I was in the treble a lot and playing the melody. I was leaning over to the right for a long time. And most of the arrangements weren't that hard for the individual parts, just made a lot of noise. (Laughs.)
GP: A royal clatter.
LOA: Lots of noise, yeah.
GP: Was it strange to play those patriotic American works in Europe last summer?
LOA: You're talking about "The Stars and Stripes Forever"?
GP: Yes, and the Gottschalk arrangement with the U.S. national anthem in it.
LOA: We weren't thinking about that. None of us really thought about that. There were also some English pieces on the concert, as I remember, "God Save the Queen" and others. And "Stars and Stripes" is very well known to pianists through [Vladimir] Horowitz's arrangement, which sounds like eight pianos! So we weren't really concerned about American national feelings when we were playing it.
GP: Are there other works that you feel ought to be arranged for eight pianos? You played the "Ride of the Valkyries," but there are probably whole chunks of Wagner that could work as well.
LOA: (Laughs.) What we did was enough. We played the "Ride of the Valkyries," and it was really noisy. It's not easy to do an arrangement for eight pianos. I was doing some arranging to my part, making it more pianistic, and I think the other pianists were doing this also. We added a lot of coloristic things. This isn't the kind of music you use a critical edition for!
I think it's important for pianists to play this kind of music. We tend to do so much "important" music, Beethoven and Schubert, and then you do this, and you develop a lot pianistically. We can be so damn serious. There's a certain amount of fun that can be had with this music.
GP: How does playing these virtuosic works influence your playing in the other, "important" style?
LOA: Well, I'm not sure it does. I've been thinking about it the last year, and I've been using these [bravura] pieces for encores, this "light" music. And looking back at the past two or three generations of pianists, they played a lot of this music, like Horowitz. And there is such pianistic freedom to be gained from playing this repertoire.
GP: Do pieces like this help you connect to the audience?
LOA: It can be to connect with an audience. But, in general, a piano recital for me should have two or three important pieces, then end with something fun. Why not end it leaving people happy?
I remembered a great comment at the end of the concert. We came off the stage and there was someone there to ask questions, and asked what it was like. Emanuel Ax said, "It was like playing nine pianos, just a little less noise." I thought that was a great comment. (Laughs.)
An interview by writer Marc Geelhoed for GREAT PERFORMANCES Online.
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