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In the past 15 years or so, few musicians have generated as much admiration and respect as Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes. He has received one of the highest honors given to pianists these days, the noncompetitive Gilmore Artist Award, and several of his recordings have won awards from GRAMOPHONE Magazine. He was the focus recently of a high-profile "Perspectives" concert series of solo and collaborative performances at Carnegie Hall. In addition to his extensive touring, Andsnes makes time for his own music festival, which he co-directs in the Norwegian fishing village of Risor. "The festival is quite intense," he says, "only six days, three or four concerts a day. You get no sleep, but there's lots of good food and lots of good music." The pianist makes a distinctive statement not only musically, whenever and wherever he performs, but also sartorially -- his concert attire is designed expressly for him by Issey Miyake.
GREAT PERFORMANCES: You were born on the island of Karmoy on the western coast of Norway. Did that environment shape your development as a musician?
Leif Ove Andsnes: I think people have a picture of the island as being very remote, but it is not totally isolated. There is a bridge to the mainland. I guess it had an effect on me growing up there. There's always a strong wind. The place has quite a violent nature, and people are used to men dying at sea. People on the island are kind of extreme. Some of them are highly religious; pietism is very strong there. There's also a lot of drug abuse. And the suicide rate is high.
GP: It appears that you are not suicidal. Do you fall into any of those other categories?
LOA: No. (Laughter)
GP: What drew you to music and, specifically, the piano when you were a kid?
LOA: The boring reason is that a piano was in our house. It was the instrument my parents were playing. They were music teachers, but not professional musicians. I started to play at an early age because I felt I needed to be inside music. It was my language, in a way. But I didn't grow up with a lot of musicians around me, so it felt like a lonely thing to play the piano. There was a period when I was 12 or 13 that I didn't want to practice. I just wanted to play football with my friends, like other kids. But I soon felt that the piano was a world in itself. There was so much you could play, and you could create a whole orchestra with a piano. I never regretted choosing the piano. I did play euphonium in the school band, which my father conducted. That was how I got my social contact.
GP: Some of the most beautiful work you have done in recent years has been accompanying tenor Ian Bostridge in German art songs. Have you always had an interest in vocal music as well as piano literature?
LOA: I have never been an opera freak. But I became attracted to lieder when I first heard the great Schubert and Schumann songs. They were so appealing for me. I immediately wanted to play that repertoire. I love to create a framework for a singer in a song cycle. I can really lose myself in Schubert's "Winterreise." It is not such hard work for a pianist, but it is so rewarding. I find myself in a different state of mind when I play this music. I like to do some concerts with singers every year.
GP: Musicians growing up when you did were surrounded with new approaches to old music, thanks to the historical authenticity movement, which changed the way a lot of people thought about playing Bach or Mozart or Beethoven. How did all of that affect you?
LOA: When I started studying music, I don't think it was so much that I paid attention to the rhetoric. It was more like I was just listening to Beethoven symphonies conducted by [Nikolaus] Harnoncourt or [Roger] Norrington, rather than someone like [Herbert von] Karajan. One of my favorite things is to listen to Bach cantatas, and I was always hearing them performed by people like Ton Koopman. So I had that sound [of authentic instruments] with me when I was studying music. For me, in the end, what matters is what speaks to us now, what serves the purpose of the music now. I find it interesting to listen to early instruments, and I may try playing one at some stage, but I have no problem playing on a modern Steinway. I do have a problem with the fortepiano in bigger halls. Maybe if I were to try it in smaller halls I would like it. With my own playing of the Viennese classics, [the authenticity movement] has had an influence. And when I've worked with the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra on this music, the string players are always experimenting with vibrato, whether to use it or not. This sort of experimentation is all very natural for my generation, a very natural part of their vocabulary, even when performing on modern instruments. In the States, they are maybe 20 years behind when it comes to early music.
GP: How do you approach music of a much later period, music, say, of Rachmaninoff, a composer you have become much associated with? What kind of influences have shaped your interpretations of this repertoire?
LOA: I think when pianists play Rachmaninoff, in particular, one thing that they don't pay much attention to is the fact that we have recordings of the composer playing the music himself. Not all of the recordings are perfect, but they show what kind of expression he was after. It was never sentimental, never static. And all those waves, with the music flowing all the time. This has been a model for me, to make sure the music always moves somehow, always has those waves.
GP: Many decades ago, highly individualized treatments of tempos and phrasing were quite common when pianists played Rachmaninoff and others, and you still encounter an occasional pianist today who goes in for some very personal statements. What's your view of that kind of playing?
LOA: I'm not for exaggeration. I do sometimes hear performances that are exaggerated, but are still effective. It depends on the musician. Someone like [Sviatoslav] Richter can get away with a performance that is very different from what Rachmaninoff intended, but the interpretation is so sincere and has such personality that it works. That's what's interesting in music, all the possibilities.
GP: Another characteristic of pianists from the old days was a respect for music that now is often ignored, exactly the kind of short character pieces or transcriptions and arrangements that fill your exceptionally appealing new CD, HORIZONS. This is the kind of music that often defined great keyboard artists of the past.
LOA: I think that there's a new openness for this kind of repertoire again, a freedom that allows for that kind of expression again. For pianists like Rachmaninoff and Horowitz, this would have been core repertoire, maybe even more so than the big pieces, whereas Brendel or Ashkenazy would probably never think of playing an arrangement. I really couldn't understand Horowitz for the longest time, why this was supposed to be such a great pianist. I was more drawn to Richter, and his more serious approach. But now I admire other things. My tastes have changed over the years. And I suddenly saw the charm in these pieces. Whether that's good or bad, I don't know. It's really a hard thing to do. I've heard people say, "It must be relaxing to play these short pieces," but it's hard to find the right character for each of these jewels. It is more difficult than making an epic journey like a Schubert sonata. It's a special challenge.
GP: I imagine it is also challenging to find something fresh to say about such pieces as Liszt's "Liebestraum" and Debussy's "Clair de Lune," which piano students invariably learn and then dismiss as too popular or clichéd to perform in public.
LOA: I recorded "Liebestraum" and "Clair de Lune" twice; the first time, I wasn't happy with the results. I went through a process of getting to understand these pieces. I think they are really unique. "Clair de Lune" is a fantastic piece; it was very new in piano repertoire at the time. It is also sweet, so it has been played in the most kitschy way.
GP: One thing that can never be said about your playing is that it's kitschy, or full of showy touches. What are the guiding principles behind your pianism?
LOA: I don't consciously think about avoiding sentimentality, but a performance just has to feel sincere. I don't like when you hear a pianist put a big stamp on the playing, so you think, "Okay, he wants to show us what he can do with this detail." That becomes false and sentimental for me. Everything has to come from out of the music. I think it's important to hear personality in someone's playing, but it's difficult to talk about what that means. You can't think of music as only an objective thing. You HAVE to put your personality 100 percent into it. But the expression should be natural. I try to avoid pulling things apart. I guess I aim for a natural expression, getting back to something natural.
GP: With the Cleveland Orchestra for its Carnegie Hall opening night concert, you are the soloist in Mozart's "Piano Concerto No. 17," K. 453. Has that work long been a favorite of yours, and what do you find particularly interesting and rewarding about it?
LOA: I started playing it only a couple years ago, but it is really one of my favorite Mozart concertos now. It is quite an experimental piece. It starts so innocently, you could say conventionally -- just another Mozart concerto. Then, suddenly, there are sorts of twists and changes, all sorts of harmonic things going on that point ahead to the Romantic period. The second movement is an opera aria, the last movement so joyous -- variations on an innocent theme that Mozart supposedly heard from a bird in his garden. The movement ends with a hilarious coda, cartoon music. It's EXTREMELY operatic. The whole piece, really, is a little opera.
GP: You occasional perform Mozart concertos while conducting from the keyboard. Are you interested in moving onto the podium someday in a big way?
LOA: Conducting from the keyboard is as far as I will go. I wouldn't want to be a pianist who is a second-rate conductor. And there is so much left to do on the piano.
GP: What in all of that music left would you like to explore next?
LOA: There is French music I would love to play more of. Next season, I will play a lot of Debussy preludes. I have played a lot of Schubert, and now I would like to go back to Beethoven. I am studying the last Beethoven sonatas now.
GP: When you do that kind of studying, do you ever work with anyone else on the music?
LOA: Sometimes I play for my old teacher in Bergen. And I have a mentor in Antwerp whom I absolutely adore playing for. It is important to have people you can play for who are really honest and won't just tell you everything is lovely, people whose judgments you can trust.
GP: And when you feel like getting away from studying or performing music?
LOA: I like to spend time with friends, cooking, going to the theater. And I have a place in the mountains in Norway. I love to go up there as much as possible -- to go skiing in the winter, hiking in the summer.
Interview by Tim Smith for GREAT PERFORMANCES Online conducted in September 2006 (photo by Lorenzo Agius).
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