Since his last Schubert Club solo recital in 2006, Norway’s Leif Ove Andsnes has emerged as one of the 21st century’s premier pianists. So it’s no surprise that St. Paul’s Ordway Music Theater was almost full to the rafters for his return Friday night.
Surely there were some proud Norwegian Americans in the crowd, prepared to celebrate the music of Andsnes’ homeland with sonatas by composers of the 19th century (Edvard Grieg) and the 20th (the rarely heard Geirr Tveitt). But the main attraction was the rare opportunity to experience Frédéric Chopin’s “24 Preludes,” arguably the romantic era’s consummate musical short story collection.
And Andsnes made them a fascinating odyssey, an expertly articulated compendium of myriad emotions and moods delivered with technical precision and heartfelt expressiveness.
But romanticism was also the evening’s opening act. Grieg was freshly in love when he wrote his lone piano sonata at age 22, and Andsnes brought a young man’s passion to his interpretation. While a playful spirit frequently emerged, earnest serenades were around every corner. Most memorable was the slow movement, when the pianist engaged in a buoyant dance before slipping away for a melancholy reverie.
Like Grieg, Tveitt took much of his inspiration from Norwegian folk tunes, but he sliced and diced them in a far more modernist fashion. Andsnes made Tveitt’s studies in Paris easy to trace in his interpretation of the composer’s “Sonata Etere,” employing the kind of adventurous devices found in the music of his French contemporary, Olivier Messiaen. Most haunting were the instances when Andsnes compressed a cluster of keys with his forearm and jabbed out staccato notes that resonated with ghostly overtones.
But the concert’s climax came with the complete Chopin Preludes, Andsnes offering a deeply fascinating performance that felt like an honest outpouring from the composer’s conflicted heart, busy mind and legendary pianistic prowess.
These 24 short works in 24 different key signatures can take on a binary feel in some hands, their major and minor moods and contrasting tempos swinging back and forth like a pendulum. But Andsnes made each little piece feel as if its own independent exclamation, a brief plunge into Chopin’s genius.
This composer could take you to powerful places in a remarkably brief amount of time, and Andsnes proved a masterful guide to the composer’s internal world. For example, he made the fourth prelude a compelling expression of sadness, the 12th a mad waltz full of thunderous intensity and the 13th a song of contentment and gratitude.
