Leif Ove Andsnes: I'd Love to Be an Absolute Master Chef
What’s your idea of perfect happiness?
Sometimes being one with nature, sometimes at certain moments on stage when something spontaneous happens, and, of course, with my close family and people I love.
What is the quality you most value in a friend?
Honesty. Yeah, and the feeling that there’s somebody who will be there forever, you know, in the same way.
Which musical work would you wish you had composed?
You know, when I think of music, the one piece of music which I heard when I was two years old, and which still gives me goosebumps, is Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 in G minor. Every time I hear that beginning, I think, this is it, this is the universe. This is music.
If you were stranded on a desert island, which music would you take with you?
It would have to be something very long, so I can listen, you know. So it’s not just a short piece that I will have to listen to 20,000 times. I mean, probably one of the big Passions by Johann Sebastian Bach. St John Passion, maybe.
What is the quality you most value in a musical partner?
I would say somebody that I am intrigued by and can learn from all the time. Not only somebody that I feel comfortable with, but somebody who’s a little bit different from me and sees things in a different way. I love that very much.
If you could invite three people from any period in history to dinner, who would they be?
If we talk about composers, for instance, I would be extremely curious to meet Chopin, Bach and Mozart. Maybe also because I would immediately ask them to play something for me, because I would be so curious to hear how they play.
What is something people might be surprised to learn about you?
I’ve become quite a football fan, actually. But maybe more surprising is that I played the euphonium until I was 17 years old. I was part of a brass band. My father was a brass band conductor. So I was deep into that when I was 15, 16, 17, and then the piano took over, of course. I watch football also with my son. We watch our local team in Bergen, called Brann.
If you could master one skill completely unrelated to music, what would it be?
Oh, I’d love to be an absolute master chef, of course. I like cooking, but it would be really fun to master it extremely well.
What is the last thing that made you laugh out loud?
I think right now.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
When I met my main teacher, Jiří Hlinka, a Czech teacher, I was 15 years old. He said to me, don’t go to normal school for the next years; immediately start at the conservatory.
I had to get special dispensation for that because I wasn’t old enough, actually. At the time, you had to go to a kind of high school first, a music high school. But I started at the conservatory immediately, and that’s the most important decision I’ve made for my development as a pianist.
Those years between 15 and 20 are so crucial in the development of your playing. You have to put so much effort into those years. And I did. I was basically only practising the piano, which was needed.
What’s the sound that you never get tired of?
Nature, when I’m in our summer house in the north of Norway, because my wife is from there, on an island. I just hear always some brooks and rivers and birdsong, and a little bit of the ocean, which is close by. It’s extremely calming and wonderful to me.
What do you wish people paid more attention to in life?
To take care of moments of silence, inner silence, because we are so bombarded with impressions, impressions, impressions all the time. And when we go for a walk, we always listen to AirPods, to different things. And I do it myself, you know, but I just have to remind myself that we also need moments of not doing anything. Just being, and a kind of meditation, but, you know, being mindful that we are here and there’s nothing happening.
There is nothing on the screen, there is nothing, you know. These moments, when we have the ability to be still in life, to experience the silence, I think we have the ability to also experience things on a much deeper level. Also music, for instance.
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