Una sinfonia alpina: Berliner Philharmoniker, Klaus Mäkelä, Leif Ove Andsnes al Festspielhaus Baden‐Baden

The career of the Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes has attracted considerable interest and excitement since his international debut in the early 1990s. He is now firmly established as one of the most compelling artists on the international concert circuit. 2004/5 is a particularly exciting season for Andnes as he will be the youngest ever Carnegie Hall 'Perspectives' artist. This will involve him performing at the hall in recital, with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, with Christian Tetzlaff and with Ian Bostridge as well as performing in a series of chamber music concerts at the Zankel Hall in the Carnegie complex.

Peter Tchaikovsky, a frequent guest of the Philharmonic Society, enthused after a concert:

'The splendid Philharmonic Orchestra in Berlin possesses a special quality, for which I can find no more appropriate expression than elasticity. They have the capacity to adapt themselves to the dimensions of a Berlioz or a Liszt, and of reproducing with equal mastery the variegated arabesques of the former and the thunderous cannonades of the latter — yet they are able to exercise the restraint called for by the gentleness of a Haydn…. The members of the Philharmonic Orchestra do not work in the theaters and are therefore not worn out and exhausted. Moreover, they are a self‐governing body, they play for their own benefit and not for an entrepreneur who takes the lion's share of the profits for himself. The coincidence of these favourable and exceptional conditions naturally contributes to the harmony of the artistic performance…'