Read on to find out the Concert Heaven and Concert Hell performances of pianist Leif Ove Andsnes...
Leif Ove Andsnes... Concert Heaven
Chopin Piano Sonata No. 3;
Liszt Mephisto Waltz No. 1 etc
Solo debut tour, Oslo, Norway (1987)
When I think about what has been a really crucial experience in my life as a musician, I always come back to my debut recital when I just turned 17. I had studied for a couple of years at the music conservatory in Bergen with my teacher Jiri Hlinka, who really inspired me and said that it was important for pianists to make a debut. I applied for a scholarship for some money to support the recitals, with the first being in Bergen – my home town. The fourth was in Oslo, and it was the most important one – there was such a huge feeling of potential to it.
Music had always been very serious and important to me, but I’m from a small community so I wasn’t surrounded by professional musicians until I was about 16. I wasn’t used to going to concerts or being in contact with people who worked in this world every day. I’d played with a symphony orchestra once as a young talent but it wasn’t part of my life, so I didn’t know what it was to be a musician or even how to really prepare for a concert. As a 14 year-old, I had played my first recital with a big programme, but with these ones at 17, I was prepared in a completely different way; I was ready to be a professional. The realisation that ‘Oh, people are listening to me and they’re really enjoying this’ was unbelievably inspiring. I saw how my life was going to take a turn.
'A new world was opening up for me'
I even remember the programme, which included Hindemith’s Ludus Tonalis, Beethoven’s Op. 110 – which was beyond my understanding at that point, yet instinctively I found it so beautiful – Liszt’s Mephisto Waltz No. 1 and Chopin’s Third Piano Sonata.
I had already won prizes and competitions, so there was a lot of buzz around the recital – there were lots of professional musicians and press in the audience – and I remember having this enormous feeling of a new world opening up. I couldn’t sleep that night; I just sat staring at the wall for hours thinking, ‘What did I experience just now?’ It felt groundbreaking.
Leif Ove Andsnes... Concert Hell
Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 4; Schumann Piano Concerto
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
Brussels, Belgium (Approx. 1999)
I had a couple of memory slips during concerts when I was young, but this one was areallyhellish night for me. I was on a tour with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and I was playing two concertos: Beethoven No. 4 and Schumann. In the third movement of the Schumann, there are two nearly identical virtuoso passages – one early in the movement and one later.
During our concert in Brussels, at the first passage, I went into what was supposed to be the second. I got into the wrong scale, the wrong key and I suddenly realised that I was completely lost with no way of finding my way back, because the orchestra’s accompaniment is so discreet. I had to stop, go up to the conductor and say, ‘We take it from here.’
'As a professional pianist, I didn’t think that sort of thing could happen'
It was such a shock. Having memory slips as a child had been bad enough; it happened once when I was about ten and I didn’t want to play without music for a couple of years. But, especially with the Schumann, which I had played several times and I really knew. What I didn’t know was that this passage was a famous trap for pianists. One really needs to know the patterns of the passages; you cannot just rely on instinct.
That memory slip felt like such a catastrophe, but the good thing was that I was performing under the Finnish conductor Paavo Berglund, who I had played with a lot. He was such a wonderful man and conductor, and he was very cool about the situation, saying, ‘Oh, that happens to everybody! Even Jascha Heifetz!’ He couldn’t care less; he just thought it was part of life. But I did not feel like it was part of life!
Another good thing, however, was that I was able to play it two days later on the tour and, although my pulse was rather high when we reached the passage, from then on I knew what the problem could be, and that was an advantage. Fortunately, I’ve had no experiences like that since – knock on wood – and it’s been over 25 years…!
‘Schubert 4 Hands’, featuring Leif Ove Andsnes and Bertrand Chamayou, is out now on Warner Classics.
