| ABOUT LEIF OVE ANDSNES' 2005/2006 SEASON IN AMERICA AND ELSEWHERE
15th September 2005
FOLLOWING A REMARKABLE SEASON THAT INCLUDED A TRIUMPHANT SEVEN-CONCERT “PERSPECTIVES” SERIES AT NEW YORK’S CARNEGIE HALL, CELEBRATED NORWEGIAN PIANIST LEIF OVE ANDSNES PREPARES FOR
ANOTHER MAJOR AMERICAN SEASON
HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE NEW RACHMANINOV RECORDING FOR
EMI CLASSICS, SPECIAL RESIDENCY WITH THE
LOS ANGELES PHILHARMONIC, MOZART TOUR WITH THE NORWEGIAN CHAMBER ORCHESTRA, U.S. PREMIERE OF PIANO CONCERTO BY MARC-ANDRÉ DALBAVIE, AND
MAJOR RECITAL TOUR THROUGHOUT EUROPE AND THE U.S.
“Leif Ove Andsnes has entered an elite circle of pianistic stardom … when he sits in front of the keyboard … extraordinary things happen.” – The New York Times
New York, NY, September 12, 2005 – Following a remarkable season that featured 20 solo, chamber and recital concerts in ten North American cities, the multiple Gramophone Award-winning Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes returns to America in 2005/2006 with an equally ambitious and wide-ranging schedule of performances.
Andsnes launches his 2005/2006 season with a flourish of Rachmaninov performances both in concert and on a new recording. Beginning on September 16, Andsnes will perform Rachmaninov’s ever-popular Piano Concerto No. 2 in three concerts with the Tokyo Philharmonic conducted by Mikhail Pletnev. Soon after, EMI Classics will release Andsnes’s recently recorded performances of Rachmaninov’s Piano Concertos Nos. 1 and 2 with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Antonio Pappano.
Andsnes’s first American performances come later in the fall when he launches a special nine-concert residency with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. A program of chamber music – featuring works by Mozart and Shostakovich – opens the series on Tuesday, November 29, followed by three performances of Grieg’s evergreen Piano Concerto on December 1 – 3 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen. On December 6, Andsnes is joined by the Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group for a program of Dalbavie and Kurtág. Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 14 comes next, with Salonen and the orchestra joining Andsnes for four performances from December 8 – 11 (Kurtág’s …quasi una fantasia…is also on the program). Andsnes finishes the series in spring 2006 with a recital with the English tenor Ian Bostridge at Walt Disney Concert Hall on Wednesday, May 3 (Andsnes and Bostridge will also give a recital in New York on May 6 as part of Bostridge’s own “Perspectives” series at Carnegie Hall).
For Andsnes, multi-concert residencies are an important and especially gratifying way to connect with local communities:
“It’s very exciting to do a concentrated period with this institution showing many different sides of my musical interests, from the Grieg Concerto – my debut work with many orchestras – to contemporary works I feel strongly about – such as the pieces by Kurtag and Dalbavie. It’s also thrilling to be working again with Esa-Pekka in such an incredible hall and with this great orchestra. My reaction after my first concert at Disney Hall was that it is the best modern concert hall: that’s how strongly I felt. My recital there last January was my first and only time performing there and I’m very eager to return.”
Early in the New Year Andsnes will give the North American premiere of Marc-André Dalbavie’s Piano Concerto, which Andsnes performed to great acclaim in world-premiere performances in August 2005 at the BBC Proms. Four performances with the Cleveland Orchestra under the direction of Franz Welser-Möst (January 4, 6, 7 and 8) will be followed by three performances with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under the direction of David Robertson (February 9 – 11). Dalbavie wrote his first piano concerto for Andsnes on a co-commission from the BBC, the Cleveland Orchestra and Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
Andsnes pays a special tribute to Mozart during the composer’s 250th birthday year with a six-city North American tour with the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra beginning in Quebec, Canada on January 11. Following performances in Portland, Maine (Jan 12), Ann Arbor (Jan 14), Chicago (Jan 15) and Philadelphia (Jan 17), Andsnes bring the tour to a close with a performance at New York’s Carnegie Hall (Jan 18). Andsnes’s work with the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra is particularly enjoyable for him. In fact, their recording together of piano concertos by Haydn was a Gramophone Award winner years back, and their most recent effort – a CD pairing Mozart’s Piano Concertos Nos. 9 and 18 – was a Billboard best-seller and listed as one of the New York Times’s Best CDs of 2004. Andsnes explains:
“My ongoing relationship with the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra is very important to me. We do one or two projects a year and we look forward to every concert together. We performed at Mostly Mozart a few years ago and have in the meantime done both European and Asian tours. I’m very happy that my journey with Mozart is with them. We’re looking very long term at Mozart’s wonderful concertos and plan to perform them – and hopefully record them – as often as possible.”
Just days after the Carnegie performance, Andsnes will perform Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 14 in the composer’s home city (Salzburg, Austria) with Nikolaus Harnoncourt and the Vienna Philharmonic (Jan 22).
A crop of recitals keep Leif Ove Andsnes busy in spring 2006 on both sides of the Atlantic. Highlights of his engagements in Europe include his solo recital debut at Vienna’s legendary Musikverein (April 5) as well as a recital in Amsterdam’s famed Concertgebouw (April 9). The American leg of his recital tour begins in St. Paul on April 27, followed by performances in Kalamazoo (April 28), and San Francisco (April 30). Andsnes’s final U.S. date in the 2005/2006 season will be a “People’s Symphony” recital at New York’s Town Hall on Sunday, May 7.
Andsnes is particularly excited to be playing Beethoven’s Opus 110 Piano Sonata on his recital programs this year:
“I played this amazing work when I was 17 in my debut recital in Norway. I didn’t understand much about the layers of the music then, but I was fascinated by it nonetheless. It is one of Beethoven’s great late sonatas, and I think I can bring so much more to it now. Performing it is something I’ve been wanting to do for a long while. I’ve done so much Schubert in past seasons, and I’d like to do late Beethoven now.”
In addition to the Rachmaninov recording, which will be available worldwide beginning in October, EMI Classics will release two additional Andsnes discs in 2005/2006. The first is a DVD scheduled for release in America in November. Leif Ove Andsnes plays Mozart, a live concert filmed in Norway in 2004, captures Andsnes and the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra in the intimate setting of the Oslo Posthallen. Andsnes and his young colleagues perform select movements from Mozart’s Piano Concertos Nos. 9, 18 and 20 and two movements of the Bach Concerto in F. The DVD also includes a bonus interview with Andsnes discussing Mozart. In early 2006 EMI Classics will release an intimate solo CD featuring nearly two dozen short piano works by a wide variety of composers. These works, which Andsnes often performs as encores at his recitals, have a special significance to Andsnes: they are works he discovered at significant times in his career, tributes to teachers and other great interpreters, and pieces with strong connections to beloved places at home and abroad.
Highlights of Andsnes’s 2004/2005 season
By every measure, 2004/2005 was a remarkable season for Andsnes. At the heart of the season was a prestigious seven-concert “Perspectives” series at New York’s Carnegie Hall, which featured Andsnes in solo and concerto performances as well as in collaboration with some of his closest musical associates. A performance of Schubert’s epic song cycle Winterreise with English tenor Ian Bostridge opened the series in October 2004. New York’s critic reported on the occasion: “I was among the awed – their performance left me shaken, as an account of this bleak wintry journey should.” Following performances with the San Francisco Symphony, a solo recital and a duo recital with Christian Tetzlaff, Andsnes brought the series to a triumphant close with several chamber music concerts at Zankel Hall in May 2005.
Andsnes was the youngest artist – and the only Scandinavian – to have been awarded the series. Saluting this and other achievements, Vanity Fair named Andsnes one of the “Best of the Best” in its January 2005 issue:
“Leif Ove Andsnes was a shy boy from rural Norway who was born with an exceptional musical gift, and he somehow developed his talent without becoming a show-off. He achieves his goal with an understated virtuosity, a warmly glowing tone, and a sensibility that has a way of bridging opposites: the grandeur of the historic and the breezy freshness of the new; the cultivated sound of the Scandinavian cities where he now lives and the pristine beauty of the Norwegian mountains, to which he often retreats; and, perhaps best of all, the mature musical mastery he has attained and the boyish sense of wonder he has apparently never lost.”
Throughout 2004/2005, Andsnes continued to make his mark as a recording artist of tremendous distinction. In September 2004, he won his third Gramophone Award, this time for his recording of piano concertos by Grieg and Schumann with the Berlin Philharmonic under the direction of Mariss Jansons. Like his Mozart Piano Concertos recording with the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra, which a Times critic called “among the most revelatory Mozart recordings of the year,” his traversal of Schubert’s Winterreise with Ian Bostridge was named one of the New York Times’s Best CDs of 2004. A recording of Schubert’s epic Sonata in B flat D. 960, released in February 2005, was a Gramophone “Editor’s Choice” and received a top rating from ClassicsToday.com, which gave it 10/10 for Artistic Quality/Sound Quality. A critic reviewing the album for the latter wrote, “Leif Ove Andsnes' ongoing Schubert sonata series reaches its apogee with one of the most perceptive, sensitively phrased, and technically cultivated interpretations of the sublime B-flat ‘Opus Posthumous’ sonata on disc.”
Andsnes returned to the small fishing village of Risor, Norway in June to preside over the annual and increasingly popular festival there (Andsnes is one of the festival’s co-directors). Then, in August 2005, Andsnes gave the world-premiere performance of Marc-André Dalbavie’s Piano Concerto with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Jukka-Pekka Saraste. Critical reaction was almost uniformly enthusiastic, with one attendee reporting for the Guardian:
“Composed for Leif Ove Andsnes, the piano writing has a real virtuoso edge too. The soloist introduces musical ideas in a multilayered way involving many thematic flashbacks and anticipations of what is to come – Dalbavie's concerto is one of a series of pieces inspired by the multi-stranded narrative of William Faulkner's novel ‘The Sound and the Fury’ – but weaves them all together in an immensely attractive way. This really is contemporary music without tears, designed to appeal to the widest possible audience.”
A select list of Leif Ove Andsnes’s engagements follows below.
For further information visit the artist’s recently re-launched web site: www.andsnes.com
Leif Ove Andses: 2005/2006 Season Engagements and Key Events
Fri, Sep 16 Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Tokyo Philharmonic/Pletnev (additional performances 9/18, 922)
Tue, Oct 4 Release of Rachmaninov Piano Concerto Nos. 1 and 2 on EMI Classics (Andsnes, Berlin Philharmonic/Pappano)
Tue, Nov 29 Begins residency with the Los Angeles Philharmonic with chamber music program (Mozart and Shostakovich)
Wed, Nov 30 Masterclass at Walt Disney Concert Hall
Thu, Dec 1 Grieg Concerto with L.A. Philharmonic/Salonen (through 12/3)
Tue, Dec 6 Concert with the Los Angeles Philharmonic New Music Group (includes music by Kurtág and Dalbavie)
Thu, Dec 8 Mozart Piano Concerto No. 14 with the L.A. Philharmonic/Salonen (through 12/11)
Wed, Jan 4 North American premiere of Marc-André Dalbavie’s Piano Concerto with the Cleveland Orchestra/Welser-Möst (additional performances 1/6, 7, 8)
Wed, Jan 11 Begins six-city North American Tour with the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra with concert in Quebec, Canada
Programs on tour include Mozart Piano Concertos Nos. 14 and 20, Haydn Piano Concerto in G Major
Thu, Jan 12 Norwegian Chamber Orchestra Tour: Portland, ME
Sat, Jan 14 Norwegian Chamber Orchestra Tour: Ann Arbor, MI
Sun, Jan 15 Norwegian Chamber Orchestra Tour: Chicago, IL
Tue, Jan 17 Norwegian Chamber Orchestra Tour: Philadelphia
Wed, Jan 18 Norwegian Chamber Orchestra Tour: Carnegie Hall, New York
Sun, Jan 22 Mozart Piano Concerto No. 14 and Haydn Piano Concerto with Vienna Philharmonic/Harnoncourt in Salzburg
Thu, Feb 9 Dalbavie Piano Concerto with Chicago Symphony Orchestra/Robertson (additional performances 2/10, 11)
Wed, Apr 5 Recital in Vienna’s Musikveriein
Sun, Apr 9 Recital in Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw
Thu, Apr 27 Recital in St. Paul, Minnesota (Schumann, Beethoven Sonata No. 31, Op. 110, Mussorgsky Pictures at an Exhibition
Fri, April 28 Recital in Kalamazoo, MI
Sat, April 29 Masterclass in Kalamazoo
Sun, April 30 Recital in San Francisco, CA
Wed, May 3 Recital with Bostridge in Los Angeles
Sat, May 6 Recital with Ian Bostridge New York’s Carnegie Hall (for Bostridge’s “Perspectives” series)
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