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Haydn - a composer in mental balance |
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 'Haydn is a composer in mental balance'  'He is tragic, but never sentimental or melancholy' |
Our Leif Ove Andsnes is out with a new CD. The Norwegian virtuoso pianist has decided to grapple Five Haydn Sonatas. But why Haydn? Is his work sufficiently challenging for a pianist who has already established himself in the top layer of pianists in the world today, and whose name is nearly as great in the British Isles as it is here at home? Kulturspeilet asked Leif Ove Andsnes personally:I started with Haydn. Thatīs where I started as a pianist. He was my introduction to the Viennese Classics. For others it was Mozart. For me it was Haydn. He is tragic, but never sentimental or melancholy. So his music is clearer than Mozartīs with its layer upon layer of emotion. Haydn is a composer in mental balance, musically speaking. I donīt think Mozart is a greater musician, but he shows a different kind of diversity.How do you approach a new work? Do you go straight to the score to find the overall form, design elements, melody, harmony, counterpoint? Do you have other pianists' interpretations in your ear? I donīt hear other pianists' interpretations when I approach a new piece. And the one dimension you talk of harmony, melody, counterpoint is infiltrated in the other. My work is structured: I go through page by page. Everything falls in place eventually. You have played Schumannīs Concerto in a-minor, Prokofievīs Third, and Beethovenīs Fifth, in Oslo in concerts over the last four months. Will we sten to these works on CDs in the near future? I now have 22 piano concerts in my repertoire, three by Beethoven together with the Choral Fantasy. Schumann is on the way- Iīm going to record one of them. Iīve recorded two Haydn concertos already. You already have a large repertoire, but everything points to you are leaning towards the great works of the Romantics? Yes, thatīs where I started. It was natural for me as a young pianist to choose compositions with great emotional and dynamic charge. I developed as I went along, in both directions historically. Iīve played Haydn, Carl Nielsen, Janacek, Szymanovskij. I would like to stretch even further out. Perhaps more Bach, more Mozart, but also more works from this century. You have given us a beautiful interpretation of Fartein Valens Piano Variations op.23. How do you feel about Valenīs music as a Westlander and Karmøy man? I think his colours are often rather grey, compared to Schoenberg, Webern and Berg. He makes it difficult for the performer. For example Schoenberg would have approached his variations differently, he would have coloured them in relation to dynamics. He would have given clearer and more detailed instructions than Valen does. I canīt listen to too much Valen without getting a little depressed. Is that perhaps because of the many pale and toothless recordings and spiritless performances we have of Valenīs orchestral works? We-e-ll! He did say himself that one should not interpret his music according to the way he looked!! Then doesnīt it therefore present a greater challenge to the performer to form the music with all the passion, temperament and nerve inherent in the music? Is it perhaps too easy an answer for the performer to require exact instructions from the hand of the composer? That's one way of looking at it. |
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Berit Kvinge Tjøme/Kjell Moe
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