| “PAINTER AND POET AS WELL AS MUSICIAN”
3rd December 2009
Pictures Reframed continues to take Europe by storm
From Brussels - where Pictures Reframed was described as one of the “artistic sensations of 2009” - to Moscow, Stockholm, Hamburg and Munich, Leif Ove Andsnes is now gearing up for the London concert on Friday 4th December with both an early evening and late night performance.
In Stockholm the sold out concert was reviewed by the Svenska Dagbladet which wrote "IAndsnes moves smoothly between the explosive and the meditative, the energetic and the melancholic” whilst the Dagens Nyheter commented "In such a presentation there is a risk that the piano drowns. But Rhode's associations are playful rather that dictating and Andsnes' playing is so dynamic that it stands strong against the waves of images."
In Hamburg both Leif Ove Andsnes and Robin Rhode were welcomed by another full house and an enthusiastically open-minded audience at the city’s groovy venue, Kampnagel. Previews that appeared immediately before the German premiere included a five star feature in Focus, features in both the Süddeutsche Zeitung and Munich's Abendzeitung, and an article headlined "Mussorgsky as Hip Piano-Film Event" in Die Welt which gave a full thumbs up to opening up the concert world to new dimensions.
"Concert is not enough!" stated Die Welt "Hundreds of thousands of listeners in central Europe do nothing else in the evening apart from sit and to listen to musicians. A beautiful and valuable culture achievement. But there is hardly anything to see! ... The spectators in the European premiere (of Pictures Reframed) were almost sucked into the movie as a theatrical experience. In the hall, darkness rules. The entire work of art somehow succeeds ... and Andsnes and Rhode open a door to possible future experiments in the concert hall."
Reviewing the performance a different journalist at Die Welt wrote: “Leif Ove Andsnes is now among the few wonderful pianists, whose performance possesses the power of the Imagination, so full of colour and narrative verve .. . as if he is a painter and poet as well as musician, all in one stroke.”
As the project reaches London, the contemporary art magazine Grafik paid tribute to the collaboration:
"Robin Rhode is one of those artists people describe as conceptual not because his work involves everything from painting, performance and sculpture to dance and film but because everything he does is loaded with a wealth of meanings and potential interpretations.
"What holds this scene [Great Gates of Kiev / the finale], and perhaps the whole project together, is the artists' desire to achieve something substantial and significant from the collaboration and a kind of mutual respect and creative trust, something that in fact is bigger than the both of them combined - something very modern and relevant, fluid and even conflicted in places. If anything, this work has been de-framed, taken out of its original context and placed in a rich world of relativity - infinitely enlivening its interest for an audience of today."
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