By calling his four-year immersion into Beethoven, particularly that composer’s five piano concertos, the Beethoven Journey, the superb Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes tried to bring extra attention to the project. He also raised expectations.
Though Mr. Andsnes had played Beethoven, he had never especially focused on him. Still, there is no reason any artist should feel obligated to play any master, even one as central to the piano repertory as Beethoven. It was rewarding enough to have Mr. Andsnes around to play Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, Janacek, Grieg and many contemporary Scandinavian composers so beautifully.
This changed when Mr. Andsnes began this project. At its core was a plan to perform and record the five concertos with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, with Mr. Andsnes also conducting from the keyboard. Implicit in the endeavor, and its title, was the message that this move represented a well-considered and personal exploration of Beethoven. So Mr. Andsnes and his collaborators were under pressure to come up with something special.
That they did, as was made clear by exhilarating programs on Monday and Wednesday nights at Carnegie Hall. In the first (broadcast live by WQXR radio and available on its website), they played the Second, Third and Fourth Concertos. The follow-up offered the First and Fifth (the “Emperor”). The hall was nearly sold out for both concerts. The performances were magnificent; the ovations enormous.
In many ways, this was no surprise. Sony Classical had released the recordings of the concertos in installments and last year issued them as a three-disc boxed set, which made my list of the best albums of the year. Also, Mr. Andsnes, 44, and this impressive orchestra have been winning praise for their performances of the complete concertos on tour: 26 cities in 13 countries, with more to come. You might think that in playing the same works so often, even seminal scores like the Beethoven concertos, the musicians risk falling into routine.
I have seldom heard the pieces performed with such freshness and palpable involvement. Mr. Andsnes has always shown a special combination of searching insight and engrossing spontaneity in his playing. The musicians of the orchestra matched those qualities excitingly.
That Mr. Andsnes both conducted the works (though he was listed as “leader,” not conductor, in the program) and played the solo parts assured an extra degree of collaborative energy, which the performances exuded. In an interview printed in the program, Mr. Andsnes says that when a pianist plays a concerto with a conductor, inevitably there is “a little bit of an ‘on’ and ‘off” button.” There was no possibility of that happening on these two nights. During orchestra tutti sections, Mr. Andsnes was on his feet, conducting with emphatic yet graceful gestures, eliciting lucid, glowing playing from the orchestra.
This was true from the spirited opening of the first work played on Monday, the Concerto No. 2 in B flat. The direction of the phrases and the character of the music, at once impish and a little coy, came through strongly. The finale, a dancing romp, sounded wonderfully feisty.
The Mahler Chamber Orchestra, founded in 1997, was an outgrowth of the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra, a prestigious training ensemble founded in 1986 on the initiative of Claudio Abbado. It still has many young members and a youthful character. During the long orchestral exposition of the first movement of the Concerto No. 3 in C minor, Mr. Andsnes set a brisk tempo yet kept the playing lithe and lean. As phrases were transformed and traded between sections of the orchestra, there was an uncommon feeling of dialogue. It made me curious to hear Mr. Andsnes conduct a Beethoven symphony. But then he sat down to begin the solo part, and the intelligence and brilliance of his playing was an immediate reminder of why we need him so much as a pianist.
The performance of the Concerto No. 4 in G conveyed the mystical allure and rhapsodic daring of the music, while providing refinement and elegance. On Wednesday night, he and the orchestra had the early First Concerto sounding as if it prefigured the mighty “Emperor,” which came after intermission, a performance at once majestic and impetuous.
During the ovations on both nights, Mr. Andsnes and the orchestra players expressed mutual admiration with applause and handshakes. He played some solo encores (Beethoven, of course): two bagatelles on Monday; one on Wednesday. The final encore offered the orchestra in two rousing German dances. During the second one, Mr. Andsnes moved to the percussion section (where a pianist fits right in) and shook a tambourine for the final flourish — a fitting way to conclude this collective journey.
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