Leif Ove Andsnes

 Leif Ove Andsnes is “a pianist of magisterial elegance, power, and insight” (The New York Times). With his commanding technique and searching interpretations, the celebrated Norwegian pianist has won acclaim worldwide, playing concertos and recitals in the world’s leading concert halls and with its foremost orchestras, while building an esteemed and extensive discography. An avid chamber musician, he was the founding director of the Rosendal Chamber Music Festival and co-artistic director of the Risør Festival of Chamber Music for nearly two decades. He was inducted into the Gramophone Hall of Fame in 2013.

Highlights of Andsnes’s 2026–27 season include the prestigious Berlin Philharmonic Europakonzert, broadcast worldwide from Turku, Finland, featuring the Grieg Piano Concerto under Chief Conductor Kirill Petrenko; a season long residency with the Hamburg NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra; serving as Artist-in-Residence at the 75th Bergen International Festival; and a 16-city Beethoven recital tour, including an appearance in the New York Philharmonic’s “Artist Spotlight” series at David Geffen Hall. In addition to the Berlin Philharmonic Europakonzert, which takes place in Finland for the first time, Andsnes joins the orchestra for additional performances of the Grieg Piano Concerto at home in the Berlin Philharmonie and on tour in Gothenburg, Stockholm, Aarhus, Copenhagen, and Hamburg. For his NDR Elbphilharmonie residency, Andsnes performs Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto with Music Director Alan Gilbert in Hamburg, Budapest, and Vienna, and premieres Missy Mazzoli’s new piano concerto at the “Elbphilharmonie Visions” festival. The multifaceted residency also features Britten’s Piano Concerto with Tabita Berglund, a solo recital of Beethoven’s final three piano sonatas, and chamber music with NDR musicians. Andsnes’s Elbphilharmonie Beethoven recital anchors a spring 2027 tour marking the 200th anniversary of the composer’s death, in cities including London, Berlin, Florence, Turin, Barcelona, Paris, Bilbao, Warsaw, Chicago, Vancouver, and New York. Elsewhere in the 2026–27 season, Andsnes gives the North American premiere of Mazzoli’s concerto with Daniel Harding and the New York Philharmonic. He reunites with Harding for Brahms’s Second with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, performs the Britten piano concerto with both the Vienna Symphony Orchestra under Elim Chan and Detroit Symphony Orchestra under Tabita Berglund, and tours Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto with Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Philharmonia.

Comprising more than 50 titles, the pianist’s discography has been recognized with eleven Grammy nominations, seven Gramophone Awards, BBC Music Magazine’s “Recording of the Year Award,” and numerous other international honors. Andsnes is also the recipient of the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Instrumentalist Award, Gilmore Artist Award, Norway’s Commander of the Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav, and the prestigious Peer Gynt Prize. He has curated Carnegie Hall’s “Perspectives” series, been the subject of the London Symphony Orchestra’s “Artist Portrait Series,” and undertaken season-long artistic residencies with the Berlin and New York Philharmonics.

Andsnes studied at the Bergen Music Conservatory under Jirí Hlinka, also receiving invaluable advice from Jacques de Tiège. Today he lives with his wife and their three children in Bergen, where he is an Artistic Adviser at the city’s Prof. Jirí Hlinka Piano Academy, as well as serving as a Visiting Professor of Piano at London’s Royal Academy of Music.