Marius Neset & Leif Ove Andsnes
Biography Marius Neset & Leif Ove Andsnes
Marius Neset
(b. 1985) remembers his very first experiences as an instrumentalist, well before he took up the saxophone at the age of eight: “As a 5-year old kid, I got a drum set,” he says, “and it was the beginning of an incredibly exciting – and rhythmical, musical journey. From the beginning it felt natural to me to play around with grooves in different odd meters, and play around with different polyrhythms too.” This particular focus, this ever-present sense of adventure are intrinsic to everything he does, whether working as a solo saxophonist, in a jazz quintet, as part of chamber ensembles or with big bands or symphony orchestras.
Neset made an astonishingly powerful impression when he first emerged onto the European jazz scene as a young saxophonist of protean gifts more than a decade ago.
Django Bates, who was a teacher and a significant mentor at the Rhythmic Conservatory in Copenhagen, had Neset in several of his band, and also appeared on Neset’s breakthrough album, Golden Xplosion (Edition, 2011).
The intervening years have seen him bring his huge creative energy to so many roles in different contexts, as either an instigator or as a catalyst. An aspect of his work which does not often receive the attention it deserves is the substantial catalogue of works which Neset now has to his name as a composer, a list which continues to grow. He has received and fulfilled a flow of major commissions for substantial pieces for large ensembles and orchestras, starting in 2012 with “Lion” written for the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra, first performed at the Molde Jazz Festival, and released as a CD in 2014. The album marked his debut with one of the leading jazz labels in Europe, ACT, with whom he has gone on to make a total of ten albums in his own name.
Since “Lion” Neset has written three major works with the London Sinfonietta: “Arches of Nature” / “Snowmelt” (2016), described as “majestic” by Downbeat, “Viaduct (2018) commissioned by the Kongsberg Jazz Festival, and most recently a commission, “Geyser” from the BBC Proms which was premiered in the Royal Albert Hall in September 2022.
Other commissions have come from Big Bands in both Bergen and Copenhagen, from the Rosendal Chamber Music Festival, where artistic director Leif Ove Andsnes, one of the leading classical pianists in the world, is a close musical colleague and friend, and from symphony orchestras: the Bergen Philharmonic who have commissioned both a saxophone concerto, “Manmade” (2020), released by the Chandos label, and a 20-minute piece for full orchestra without saxophone (2021), and also the Norwegian Radio Orchestra.
Marius Neset has now received well over twenty awards or award nominations for albums and from festivals. The first was received as a teenager from the NattJazz Festival in Bergen. In Norway several EDVARD nominations and Spelleman prize and nominations have followed. He has won prize and been nominated in different categories at the German ECHO Awards. He was also the only European to be listed as one of "25 for the Future" by Downbeat in 2016.
Neset’s dynamism and his organisational capacity are such that this substantial activity as composer runs in parallel with a busy touring schedule as both leader and sideman – he is a member of Arild Andersen’s new quartet which has a new recording on ECM. It is just part of a substantial and growing discography. Neset’s main release in the current quarter (autumn 2022) is with a newly-formed quintet. “Happy”, on the ACT label features Neset’s closest musical associate, Swedish drummer Anton Eger, and other leading lights of European jazz of his generation: Magnus Hjorth on piano, Elliot Galvin on keyboards and Conor Chaplin on electric bass.
The common thread running through Neset’s career is that both his compositions and playing have consistently attracted other world class musicians, not only the jazz-scene, but from from many different genres in the musical world to want to work. The result is that the sheer breadth of Marius Neset’s activity at the top level in all kinds of musical contexts is astonishing, and is still broadening.
Leif Ove Andsnes
The New York Times calls Leif Ove Andsnes “a pianist of magisterial elegance, power, and insight,” and the Wall Street Journal names him “one of the most gifted musicians of his generation.” 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 is the founding director of the Rosendal Chamber Music Festival, was co-artistic director of the Risør Festival of Chamber Music for nearly two decades, and served as music director of California’s Ojai Music Festival in 2012. He was inducted into the Gramophone Hall of Fame in July 2013, and has received honorary doctorates from Norway’s Universities of Bergen and Oslo and New York’s Juilliard School.
Two concertos figure prominently in Andsnes’s 2024-25 season. After recent performances of Beethoven’s “Emperor” Concerto with ensembles including the New York Philharmonic and London Symphony Orchestra, he reprises the work with Washington’s National Symphony Orchestra, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Rome’s Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, and on tour with the Oslo Philharmonic. Similarly, after recent accounts of Rachmaninov’s Third with ensembles including the Philadelphia Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony, and Orchestre de Paris, he performs it at Baden-Baden’s Easter Festival with the Berlin Philharmonic, on a North European tour with Italy’s Grandhôtel Orchestra Toblach, and with the Rotterdam Philharmonic, Stuttgart Radio Symphony, and London Philharmonic Orchestras. To complete the concert season, he joins the Czech Philharmonic for Grieg’s Concerto, the Barcelona Symphony for a pairing of Haydn and Franck, and the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra for Debussy’s Fantaisie at the Hamburg International Festival. With a solo program combining Chopin’s 24 Preludes with sonatas by Norwegians Grieg and Geirr Tveitt, he embarks on an extensive transatlantic recital tour, featuring dates at New York’s Carnegie Hall and London’s Wigmore Hall. The latter forms part of a season-long residency at the British venue, to which he returns for chamber collaborations with fellow pianist Bertrand Chamayou and with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra (MCO), as the culmination of their European tour.
As the MCO’s first Artistic Partner, Andsnes has already led the ensemble from the keyboard in two major, multi-season projects. In “Mozart Momentum 1785/86,” they explored one of the most creative and seminal periods of the composer’s career with live accounts of Mozart’s Piano Concertos Nos. 20–24 at London’s BBC Proms and other key European venues, as well as recorded ones for Sony Classical. The project’s first album, MM/1785, was nominated for a 2022 International Classical Music Award, and recognized with France’s prestigious Diapason d’or de l’année for Best Concerto Album of 2021. The second album, MM/1786, was named one of the “Best Classical Albums of 2022” by Gramophone, while the two-volume series won the magazine’s 2022 “Special Achievement” Award. This followed the success of “The Beethoven Journey.” An epic four-season focus on the composer’s music for piano and orchestra, this took the pianist to 108 cities in 27 countries for more than 230 live performances. He led the MCO in complete Beethoven concerto cycles at high-profile residencies in Bonn, Hamburg, Lucerne, Vienna, Paris, New York, Shanghai, Tokyo, Bodø, and London, besides collaborating with such leading international ensembles as the Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, London Philharmonic, and Munich Philharmonic. The project was chronicled in the documentary Concerto – A Beethoven Journey (2016), and Andsnes’s partnership with the MCO was captured on the hit Sony Classical three-volume series The Beethoven Journey. The first volume was named iTunes’ Best Instrumental Album of 2012 and awarded Belgium’s Prix Caecilia, the second recognized with BBC Music’s coveted “2015 Recording of the Year Award,” and the complete series chosen as one of the “Best of 2014” by the New York Times.
Andsnes’s discography comprises more than 50 titles – solo, chamber, and concerto releases, many of them bestsellers – spanning repertoire from the Baroque to the present day. He has been nominated for eleven Grammys and his many international prizes include seven Gramophone Awards. His EMI Classics recordings of the music of his compatriot Edvard Grieg have been especially celebrated: the New York Times named Andsnes’s 2004 recording of Grieg’s Piano Concerto with Mariss Jansons and the Berlin Philharmonic a “Best CD of the Year,” the Penguin Guide awarded it a coveted “Rosette,” and both that album and his disc of Grieg’s Lyric Pieces won Gramophone Awards. His recording of Mozart’s Piano Concertos Nos. 9 and 18 was another New York Times “Best of the Year” and Penguin Guide “Rosette” honoree. He won yet another Gramophone Award for Rachmaninov’s Piano Concertos Nos. 1 and 2 with Antonio Pappano and the Berlin Philharmonic. A series of recordings of Schubert’s late sonatas, paired with lieder sung by Ian Bostridge, inspired lavish praise, as did the pianist’s world-premiere recordings of Marc-André Dalbavie’s Piano Concerto and Bent Sørensen’s The Shadows of Silence, both of which were written for him. Leif Ove Andsnes: The Complete Warner Classics Edition 1990-2010, a 36-CD retrospective of his EMI and Virgin recordings, was released to acclaim in 2023. In addition to The Beethoven Journey and MM 1785/86, his recent Sony Classical releases include Dvořák’s unjustly neglected piano cycle Poetic Tone Pictures, Chopin: Ballades & Nocturnes, and the Billboard best-selling Sibelius, all recorded for Sony; Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring & other works for two pianos four hands, recorded with Marc-André Hamelin for Hyperion; and Schumann: Liederkreis & Kernerlieder, recorded with Matthias Goerne for Harmonia Mundi. Both the Hamelin and Goerne collaborations were nominated for Grammy Awards.
Andsnes has received Norway’s distinguished honor, Commander of the Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav, and in 2007, he received the prestigious Peer Gynt Prize, awarded by members of parliament to honor prominent Norwegians for their achievements in politics, sports, and culture. In 2004-05, he became the youngest musician (and first Scandinavian) to curate Carnegie Hall’s “Perspectives” series, and in 2015-16 he was the subject of the London Symphony Orchestra’s Artist Portrait Series. Having been 2010-11 Pianist-in-Residence of the Berlin Philharmonic, he went on to serve as 2017-18 Artist-in-Residence of the New York Philharmonic and 2019-20 Artist-in-Residence of Sweden’s Gothenburg Symphony. The recipient of both the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Instrumentalist Award and the Gilmore Artist Award, Andsnes was named one of the “Best of the Best” by Vanity Fair in 2005.
Leif Ove Andsnes was born in Karmøy, Norway in 1970, and studied at the Bergen Music Conservatory under the renowned Czech professor Jirí Hlinka. He has also received invaluable advice from the Belgian piano teacher Jacques de Tiège, who, like Hlinka, greatly influenced his style and philosophy of playing. Today Andsnes lives with his wife and their three children in Bergen. He is an Artistic Adviser at the city’s Prof. Jirí Hlinka Piano Academy, where he gives a masterclass to participating students each year.
