Old-Fashioned Modernity: Leif Ove Andsnes

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LEIF OVE ANDSNES WAS winning piano competitions at an age when most of us were competing only in the confines of the school gym. The Grammy Award-nominated Norwegian classical pianist is no less ambitious now that he's 39. His latest project is a multi-media stage rendering of Modest Mussorgsky's notoriously difficult suite "Pictures at an Exhibition." For the production, titled "Pictures Reframed," Andsnes has partnered with South African visual artist Robin Rhode, who created a series of films to go along with Andsnes' live performances. "Pictures Reframed" premiered at New York's Lincoln Center last week and stops in D.C. on Friday.

» EXPRESS: How did the idea of a collaborative series of concerts come about?
» ANDSNES: I've had a wish for years to try to do a different kind of concert — and it was also partly inspired by the Lincoln Center having a program combining different art disciplines. They had talked with me for years about the possibility of doing something like this. I was playing Mussorgsky's piece a few years ago and I thought maybe this is something we could bring to visual art somehow. Then I met Robin three years ago and we decided to do this together.

» EXPRESS: What will Robin's role be at the concerts?
» ANDSNES: He has basically finished his work. He has made a series of films. "Pictures at an Exhibition" consists of 15 movements, so the film, as such, consists of 15 different short films to go with the movements. But he's not performing or doing any performance live.

» EXPRESS: I've read that both of you did more than two years of preparation for this production. What went into that?
» ANDSNES: We had to find a way the film could be adjusted to my speed — my tempo each evening — because obviously I'm playing it a little different from evening to evening. And we discussed how the visuals could work for the music and what kind of visuals would work. This piece has quite strong narrative in itself, and he wanted to avoid doing it in a way that became banal.

» EXPRESS: You've performed "Pictures" before — what is it about this piece that intrigues you?
» ANDSNES: I think it's one of the greatest pieces of music ever written. It's just unbelievable it was written in 1878. It's just such a modern piece and a modern concept — I mean the fact that it's also a piece of theater and it's written for the piano; it's not staged. You "see" images when you hear the piece — you see this character walking into this exhibition and basically just crashing into this first picture. And from there he becomes totally overwhelmed. So it's a very psychological work. It's full of action.

» Kennedy Center, Terrace Theater, 2700 F St. NW; Fri., Nov. 20, 7:30 p.m., $45; 202-785-9727, Kennedy-center.org, Wpas.org. (Foggy Bottom-GWU)

Written by Express contributor Tony Sclafani
Photo courtesy Benjamin Ealovega