Customer Reviews

Leif Ove Andsnes: A Portrait

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The Wedding Day At Troldhaugen, Op.65 No.6 - Leif Ove Andsnes' playing is magical! This CD is an exceptional value! I have purchased this CD as a gift and have received positive reviews from the recipients as well!

Andsnes is without any doubt overrated. His playing of most of these works is too polished for my taste and lacking in character and expression. One might be tempted to say that he plays everything as if it was written by Bach in which case detachment would be king.

Having said that, the works themselves are all enjoyable and Andsnes's clinical approach suits some of them quite well although others may be lacking colour. The performance of the Shostakovich concerto is really good here. In it the trumpet brings the colour to the table with Andnes's clinical piano playing contrasting perfectly against the vivid trumpet lines.

I'd give this CD set only three stars if it wasn't for the low price which adds a bargain feature to the package, lifting the rating to four stars...

Naida Cole. Leif Ove Andsnes. Yundi Li. Lang Lang. My neighbor's 17-year-old kid. Classical piano is getting more faceless than ever. Where are the big names, the people who play five bars and you say, "Why, that's....!" I can tell Arrau or Horowitz or Richter or Gilels in fifteen seconds. With the present pianist, I'm lucky if I'm still awake after fifteen seconds.

I don't get all the fuss about Andsnes. I really think most of today's classical "stars" are PR-driven creations. This one is, at any rate. He plays almost all the works in these two discs the same, with zero color, zero phrasing, zero individuality. The piano sounds pretty much the same, whether the work be Haydn or Shostakovich. (Listen to Glenn Gould playing works by Byrd, Gibbons and Sweelinck and hear how he manages to suggest the sonority of a harpsichord on a piano. Amazing!) Andsnes avoids contrasts, he avoids abrupt changes in tempo, he avoids inserting his personality into the works, he avoids finding personality--charm, irony, detachment, amusement, even just simple joy--in the works. Admittedly, some of the compositions here are so obscure I cannot really comment on them, because I've never heard them before, am unfamiliar with the composers and don't have comparisons for listening. But for the works that I have heard, you can get a more interesting Grieg Concerto by Zimerman/Karajan (But who'd want to? It's a pretty vapid piece.), a far better Haydn Concerto by Richter if you can find it (it's a shame this witty work--and believe me, in better hands it is witty and it's not amateurishly *rushed*--isn't better-known), a more charming Haydn B minor sonata by Ax--by AX, for crying out loud!, and with him you get the whole thing and not just the second and third movements--and a better Janacek sonata by Firkusny. A better Grieg Op. 43 No.1 can be found by Gilels. A better Brahms Intermezzo, the disc's biggest joke, can be found anywhere--try behind the sofa. The Rachmaninoff is one of the better moments--here, recordings by Demidenko, Horowitz and Rachmaninoff himself didn't exactly blow me away in comparison. (If I have others I can't find them right now.) The Shostakovich Trumpet thingie is surpassed by Jansons and the Berlin Philharmonic, for just one. Some of the smaller works I don't know, but if they have their Norwegian charm, Andsnes doesn't bring it out here. Listen to this disc, and you'll go away with the very popular myth that classical music is this ultra-polished, tidy stuff that's good to have on in your car for your morning commute when you can't get NPR. But you won't have the sound of a thinking pianist, or one who seems to understand the music he's playing.