| EXQUISITELY NUANCED PLAYING WITH LEIF OVE ANDSNES
1st March 2010
Evening Standard reviews the Wigmore Hall concert
Both the major bicentenary composers, Schumann and Chopin, featured on the recital programme of Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes on Saturday. But the crucial element of fantasy was not ideally captured in any of their pieces. Rather, it was in a Bach encore that his somewhat foursquare rhythmic manner came into its own. There was, to be sure, some exquisitely nuanced playing throughout the recital. Schumann’s Three Romances, op.28, demonstrated Andsnes’s familiar virtues — beauty of tone, natural phrasing and sovereign technique — while Kinderscenen had a quality of childlike simplicity without quite the spellbinding poetic impulse the music demands.
Chopin’s Ballades No. 1 in G minor and No. 3 in A flat both elicited superbly controlled passage-work: Andsnes wears his virtuosity lightly and never allows it to dominate expression. And yet, neither here nor in the B major Nocturne, op.62 no. 1, was there anything much to arrest the ear or seize the imagination. The rhythmic dislocations of the Waltz in A flat, op.42, were delightfully executed, though for all the technical facility this sequence of four waltzes again tended towards the unremarkable.
The Bach Toccata, however, which was the second of three encores, was another matter. Here tonal variegation and rhythmic precision were combined in a flawless, satisfying performance. The recital was recorded for broadcast on Radio 3 on 6 May.
Barry Millington, Evening Standard, 1st March
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