88 Keys to Success

It’s the classical music world’s equivalent of TV’s “The Millionaire,” a competition in which an unsuspecting pianist is awarded $300,000--the first $50,000 in cash and the rest for “career-enhancement” projects. Instead of the apocryphal John Beresford Tipton, however, the benefactor is an eccentric Kalamazoo, Mich., department store magnate and amateur pianist named Irving S. Gilmore who set up a foundation to aid young people, the disadvantaged and the performing arts before his death in 1986.

“It came as a bolt out of the blue,” recalled Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes, whose performance with the L.A. Philharmonic this weekend will be his first U.S. appearance since winning the 1998 Gilmore Artist Award in October. “It was like winning some strange lottery. When the call came through, I said I’d phone back--after I’d taken a cold shower.”

Jury head Irma Vallecillo delivered the news after she and the other six jurors followed Andsnes on tour. In contrast to most music competitions, which artists enter themselves, she explains, the Gilmore approach relies on mystery--assessing the candidates without their knowledge, in the manner of the MacArthur Foundation “genius” grants. “We’re able to see artists in their natural environments over a span of time, unencumbered by nerves,” she observes.

Andsnes won the award--now given every four years--out of a field of 92 pianists nominated by 150 teachers, musicians and others in the international classical music world. The jurors, including Ravinia Festival director Zarin Mehta and Martin Goldsmith, host of National Public Radio’s arts program “Performance Today,” then pared the field down, rating each candidate on musicianship, charisma and the ability to sustain a developing career. They were required to attend at least three performances of the five finalists.

“The first time I heard Leif Ove was with the Chicago Symphony last January,” said Vallecillo, a teacher at the New England Conservatory who also serves as artistic director of the nine-day biannual Irving S. Gilmore International Keyboard Festival at which the latest Gilmore winner is presented. “He was playing Grieg miniatures, each of them exquisite--like gems. Then I heard him play Rach 3 [Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3] with the N.Y. Philharmonic, displaying all the passion in the world. Andsnes has something very personal to say, both fiery and poetic.”

Vallecillo is not alone in her assessment. When EMI released Andsnes’ 1997 recording of the technically demanding Rachmaninoff concerto--a classic further popularized by last year’s independent film “Shine”--the New York Times called it “the most important new recording of the work in 20 years.”

Having large hands, like the composer, works in his favor, says the 27-year-old Andsnes, who will be playing Beethoven’s Concerto No. 4 (“unusually heavenly and poetic,” according to the pianist, “for the manly Beethoven”) during his Los Angeles run. And if there’s a lyrical thrust to his interpretation, he adds, it can be traced, in part, to his Scandinavian roots.

Reared on an island south of Bergen, Andsnes was surrounded by mountains--and silence, an unusual opportunity in this technological age. “Stillness gives a different color to the Scandinavian people and music-making--a melancholy, darker tone,” he said. “And studying there, I had none of the competitiveness you get from attending Juilliard. I could develop peacefully--without using my elbows.”

Both parents were music teachers, piano players themselves. Andsnes’ mother led the church choir. His father conducted the school band in which Leif Ove played the euphonium--a small tuba. From the age of 5, he also studied piano, which he pursued at the Bergen Conservatory as a teen. There he met Czech professor Jiri Hlinka, who inspired him to make music his life. Living away from home during the week, young Leif Ove practiced six hours a day. “Hlinka showed me that music is all about movement--of the hands, fingers, wrists and arms,” he said.

Physicality, Andsnes notes, has always been a focus of his--and a staple of the “big Russian pianists” such as Sviatoslav Richter whom he’s idolized since the start. “In the Russian school, the body is a more active part of the playing than the German school, which is purely finger work,” he explained. “Still, I’m less physical than I used to be since, five years ago, I developed tendinitis in my shoulders and rethought the way I played.”

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Signed by Virgin Classics at the age of 19, Andsnes recorded the Grieg concerto in 1991, which climbed the charts back home. Widely known internationally, the Norwegian work became “his piece.” After performing it 65 times, however, he eliminated it from his repertoire. “It was following me too closely,” says the pianist whose concerts are now dominated by Chopin, Liszt, Schumann, Haydn, Beethoven and Rachmaninoff.

Already playing 80 to 90 concerts a year, Andsnes is better known than the two previous Gilmore winners. But the award, he says, is still beneficial. It raises audiences’ expectations, involves them more in each performance. And the $50,000 stipend has already been spent--on a Bosendorfer piano, now sitting in his Copenhagen apartment.

Andsnes hasn’t decided what direction he’ll take with the other $250,000. But many are betting that chamber music will get a boost. He’s co-director of the highly regarded Riso Chamber Music Festival in Norway--a yearly event that indulges his passion for small-ensemble playing. And on Monday, he’ll join some members of the L.A. Philharmonic at the University of Judaism’s Gindi Auditorium tackling chamber works by Mozart, Bartok and Beethoven. “Playing chamber music feeds my solo performing,” he said. “You get so close to others you’re playing with--it’s like a marriage, musically and personally.”

In the year 2000, Andsnes plans a six-month sabbatical during which he’ll add some new pieces to his repertory--especially concentrating on Bach. “I was fed the myth that basic technique must be mastered before 20,” he said. “But, to my surprise, I’ve developed as much in the last couple of years. My capacity for learning is greater now because of a larger frame of reference.”

While the Gilmore Award is gratifying, Andsnes says, it’s the internal barometer that counts. “I can get a good response and know inside my concert wasn’t good,” he said. “I can bomb and know I did well. There’s a lot of pressure from critics and audience, but the hardest person to satisfy is myself.”

* Leif Ove Andsnes appears tonight and Saturday, 8 p.m., and Sunday, 2:30 p.m., Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., Tickets $8-$63. On Monday at 8 p.m., he also plays in the Philharmonic Chamber Music Society series at the Gindi Auditorium, University of Judaism, 15600 Mulholland Drive; $25. (213) 850-2000.