Ove Andsness

A rare jewel among the piano repertoire, Dvorák's Poetic Tone Pictures, a cycle of piano solo works, is mostly unknown to the public. Following the great success of his Sibelius album in 2017, Leif Ove Andsnes once again brings lesser known piano music into the spotlight, delivering a treasure chest of accessible and romantic tunes performed with artistic brilliance. With his commanding technique and searching interpretations, Leif Ove Andsnes has won worldwide acclaim, performing in the world's leading concert halls and with it's foremost orchestras. An avid chamber musician, he is also the founding director of Norway's Rosendal Chamber Music Festival.

Mozart Momentum 1785 is the first of two releases on which pianist Leif Ove Andsnes and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra are exploring the remarkable years of 1785/86 in W.A. Mozart's life. It includes piano concertos Nos 20-22, the Piano Quartet in G minor, Masonic Funeral Music and Fantasia in C minor for solo piano.

Two of Norway's most celebrated musicians come together to perform the music of the country's most celebrated composer, Edvard Grieg. Soprano Lise Davidsen and pianist Leif Ove celebrate the songs of Grieg with a wide-ranging collection of songs. Recorded in the Arctic Circle in Bodo - Lise describes the `magical' time recording this music with a special team in rural Norway.

Leif Ove Andsnes and Antonio Pappano deliver full-bodied and intelligently detailed readings of Rachmaninov’s first two concertos that rightly project the composer’s virtuosic keyboard writing and scintillating orchestration on equal footing. EMI’s vivid engineering gives welcome yet never distracting presence to first-desk solos, rapid woodwind flurries, and sweeping brass counterpoints. It also captures a fair amount of heavy breathing from either the soloist or conductor. However, the Berlin Philharmonc strings beckon your primary attention, as Pappano inspires them to throb, sigh, and sing as if Leopold Stokowski had come back to life–although the heavy vibrato in the First concerto’s opening theme borders on Mantovani’s oleaginous turf.

Leif Ove Andsnes and Antonio Pappano deliver full-bodied and intelligently detailed readings of Rachmaninov’s first two concertos that rightly project the composer’s virtuosic keyboard writing and scintillating orchestration on equal footing. EMI’s vivid engineering gives welcome yet never distracting presence to first-desk solos, rapid woodwind flurries, and sweeping brass counterpoints. It also captures a fair amount of heavy breathing from either the soloist or conductor. However, the Berlin Philharmonc strings beckon your primary attention, as Pappano inspires them to throb, sigh, and sing as if Leopold Stokowski had come back to life–although the heavy vibrato in the First concerto’s opening theme borders on Mantovani’s oleaginous turf.

This performance of the Piano Concerto won't be to everyone's taste. Leif Ove Andsnes, who has a decided point of view on the music, plays with his emphasis on the lyrical aspects of the music. He could obviously play the heroic outbursts of the first movement as strongly as he wants to, but he downplays them somewhat to keep them in context. You can get more excitement in other places, but only Curzon and Moravec have made this concerto such a poetic, emotional experience. Simon Rattle and the orchestra second Andsnes's viewpoint very convincingly. The Intermezzi, already elegiac in tone, are particularly affecting as Andsnes plays them; this "bonus" could easily be worth the price of the disc.

After several successful years as a freelancer in Vienna it appears as if Mozart was no longer interested in pleasing Viennese society’s taste with music for pure entertainment. The composer continued down the path of personal discovery he had embarked upon the year before, and with ever more resolve: while Vienna was still “Piano Land” to Mozart, it was now on his terms. His head was primarily full of opera. Mozart’s work on Figaro led him to paint situation and emotion with new colouristic tools which would spill over into the piano concertos that followed it, each of them imbued with a more fluid sense of dialogue between soloist and orchestra. The first concerto on this recording exchanges material with Figaro’s rapid, conversational and changeable style. He expands the orchestration and “there are manic changes in the music.

The album Who We Are is the first studio recording of the collaboration between pianist Leif Ove Andsnes and saxophonist/composer Marius Neset. They are joined on the record by flautist Ingrid Softeland Neset and cellist Louisa Tuck. The music, composed by Neset, was recorded at Oslo's Rainbow Studio in the course of three days in December, 2023.

The album Who We Are is the first studio recording of the collaboration between pianist Leif Ove Andsnes and saxophonist/composer Marius Neset. They are joined on the record by flautist Ingrid Softeland Neset and cellist Louisa Tuck. The music, composed by Neset, was recorded at Oslo's Rainbow Studio in the course of three days in December, 2023.

The New York Times calls Leif Ove Andsnes “a pianist of magisterial elegance, power, and insight,” and the Wall Street Journal names him “one of the most gifted musicians of his generation.” With his commanding technique and searching interpretations, the celebrated Norwegian pianist has won acclaim worldwide, playing concertos and recitals in the world’s leading concert halls and with its foremost orchestras, while building an esteemed and extensive discography. An avid chamber musician, he is the founding director of the Rosendal Chamber Music Festival, was co-artistic director of the Risør Festival of Chamber Music for nearly two decades, and served as music director of California’s Ojai Music Festival in 2012. He was inducted into the Gramophone Hall of Fame in July 2013, and received honorary doctorates from New York’s Juilliard School and Norway’s University of Bergen in 2016 and 2017, respectively.