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| Musical summitry: Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes played atop a mountain for a documentary about composer Edvard Grieg.
(The piano was hoisted by helicopter.) He played with the Boston Symphony Orchestra recently. Courtesy of NRK |
From fjord to fame: A Norwegian concert pianist hits the world stage
Out of the land of Grieg comes Leif Ove Andsnes. His mission: to compete with ringtones, iTunes, and YouTube for short attention spans.
from the January 17, 2008 edition
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He found an eager if somewhat subdued student in Andsnes. The boy would always show up for lessons with a fistful of newly sharpened pencils in his hands, which look as if they'd be more at home gripping an ax than resting on ivory.
"What we had to work the most with was his tendency to take too long to "catch fire" artistically," writes Mr. Hlinka in an e-mail. But Andsnes made the most of Hlinka's expertise – even milking it through the conservatory's thin walls by practicing adjacent to his teacher's studio.
"[Hlinka] would come running in and say, 'No, no, no, you have to use this fingering,' " recalls Andsnes with a chuckle. "So I got all these extra lessons that way.
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At 18, and with some international competition success, Andsnes "became Norway's hero and idol," says Hlinka, who was afraid the success had gone to the boy's head. "I often spent the lessons getting him back down to earth again."
The teen behavior Hlinka disliked subsided, and Andsnes's realization that he could communicate something special matured.
He always had a love for music, says his mother, Sissel Andsnes, who recalls that her son's practice dwindled to only an hour a day when he was 11 and was absorbed more by soccer. But, she says, eventually he developed "a feeling that ... music has chosen him, so he has to interpret [it] in the best way he can. If it makes people happy, he's really happy."
Indeed, in today's world of ringtones, iTunes, and YouTube, securing a global audience for one's music is perhaps no longer the mark of greatness. It's getting people to listen that requires genius.
"I've noticed from the start that when I play concerts, people get quiet, they listen when I play ... that's what I want to achieve even more of," says Andsnes, who has been nominated for a Grammy several times.
Larry Wolfe, a bassist with the BSO for 38 years, compares the pianist's talent to a parent's ability to communicate in just the right tone. The musical moments he chooses to dramatize, observed Mr. Wolfe after rehearsing recently with Andsnes, are carefully chosen and appropriately expressed. It is "believable, it resonates, it's respectful of the listener and of the composer."
Though respectful, Andsnes also tries to bring new insight to pieces that were often written within weeks. "Maybe sometimes I can find secrets that [the composers] didn't necessarily see, even in their own music," explains Andsnes.
With such freshness, he says he's trying to keep classical music from becoming a subculture in a society that caters to short attention spans.
"It's so hard to get people to sit down and listen," he says. "But because of these distractions, this music is quite important today."
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