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Leif Ove Andsnes

Leif Ove Andsnes / Classic fm Interview
Pianist Leif Ove Andsnes Performs Bagatelle Op. 1 No. 3 by Silvestrov on WQXR
Dvorák's "Spring Song" from Poetic Tone Pictures Performed by Leif Ove Andsnes on WQXR

With his commanding technique and searching interpretations, Leif Ove Andsnes has won worldwide acclaim, performing in the world’s leading concert halls and with its foremost orchestras. An avid chamber musician, he is also the founding director of Norway’s Rosendal Chamber Music Festival.

Following the success of the “Beethoven Journey” collaboration, Andsnes and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra partner for their second multi-year project titled “Mozart Momentum 1785/86” which sees them explore one of the most creative and seminal periods of the composer’s career. In Spring 2021 Sony Classical releases the first of two volumes in the project, featuring Mozart’s piano concertos Nos. 20, 21 and 22 and chamber music written in the same year.

Leif Ove Andsnes records exclusively for Sony Classical. His previous discography comprises more than 30 discs for EMI Classics – solo, chamber, and concerto releases, many of them bestsellers – spanning repertoire from the time of Bach to the present day. He has been nominated for eleven Grammys and awarded many international prizes, including six Gramophone Awards.  Recent releases encompass the Billboard best-selling Sibelius as well as Chopin: Ballades & Nocturnes (Sony Classical), an album of Stravinsky’s music for two pianos with Marc-André Hamelin (Hyperion), Schumann’s Liederkreis & Kernerlieder, with Matthias Goerne (Harmonia Mundi), Bent Sørensen’s piano concerto, La Mattina, with the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra and Per Kristian Skalstad (Dacapo) and a disc dedicated to the music of Norwegian composer Ketil Hvoslef on which Andsnes performs the piano concerto written in 1994 with the Bergen Philharmonic and Edward Gardner (Simax).

Andsnes has received Norway’s distinguished honor, Commander of the Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav as well as the prestigious Peer Gynt Prize. He is also the recipient of the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Instrumentalist Award and the Gilmore Artist Award. He was inducted into the Gramophone Hall of Fame in 2013 and made an honorary doctorate of both New York’s Juilliard School of Music and the Bergen Conservatoire in 2016.

Leif Ove Andsnes was born in Karmøy, Norway in 1970, and studied at the Bergen Music Conservatory under the renowned Czech professor Jirí Hlinka. He has also received invaluable advice from the Belgian piano teacher Jacques de Tiège who, like Hlinka, has greatly influenced his style and philosophy of playing.  He is currently an Artistic Adviser for the Prof. Jirí Hlinka Piano Academy in Bergen where he gives annual masterclasses. Andsnes lives in Bergen with his family of three children.