Marius Neset and Leif Ove Andsnes releases the final single from their upcoming album. The beautiful "Prague´s Ballet" is out now.

LYTT HER

“We were appearing separately on a major TV show being broadcast from Grieghallen in Bergen, but NRK [the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation] asked if we could consider doing something together, too,” Marius Neset explains. “I gave them ‘Prague’s Ballet’, which I had recorded with my quintet, and asked them to play it for Leif Ove. Would he consider playing it if I wrote an arrangement for him? He liked the idea, and I sent him the arrangement. But then the TV show was cancelled because the main guest on the programme, Professor Frank Aarebrot, passed away. The following year we did get the chance to play ‘Prague’s Ballet’ all the same, when Leif Ove agreed to participate in my quintet concert in Håkon’s Hall during the Bergen International Festival. NRK, still keen to have us play together, even made a short film about the concert preparations, which was broadcast as part of the programme ‘Hovedscenen’ on NRK2.”

“Marius came up with a trio arrangement for the two of us and cellist Andreas Brantelid, a slightly more classical version of ‘Prague’s Ballet’, which I thought was really good,” says Leif Ove Andsnes. “I stayed in Håkon’s Hall and listened to the rest of his concert, too, and was extremely impressed by both his originality and the level of his work with his quintet. I thought that he was operating at a fascinating frontier in writing for those of us who don’t improvise, and decided to commission a work from him for the Rosendal Chamber Music Festival. He accepted the commission, and we aimed at having something ready for the Festival in 2020.”

            Did you give him free rein?

            “2020 was the year when Beethoven’s 250^th birthday was celebrated, so I said, ‘There are no restrictions, but if you want, you can use something by Beethoven as your point of departure, for instance the second movement of the Seventh Symphony’.” 

“I was very pleased that Leif Ove wanted to collaborate more after ‘Prague’s Ballet’,” says Marius. “I had assumed that we would only work together that once, and thought, ‘What an experience it was to play with him; what a fantastic pianist.’ But then he contacted me again later that year. We met up in Bergen, talked about what we might consider doing at Rosendal, and decided on a combination including flute and cello. Actually, it was probably Leif Ove’s suggestion to invite Ingrid and Louisa to participate in what seemed to me to be a really exciting chamber quartet.”

            The result of the further collaboration can be heard when the album is released on September 20th.

As musicians with backgrounds from different genres, they usually focus on different stylistic models in their expressive idioms. For example, like most of his classical colleagues and unlike jazz performers, Andsnes does not improvise. But despite this difference and others, Who We Are strongly suggests that the similarities in the two players’ musical perceptions and approaches are more prevalent and significant than the differences, and that they are pursuing many of the same objectives in their musical narratives.

            In their encounter here, in Neset’s compositions, their playing is imbued with a tangibly inspired, hyper-communicative, fertile sense of community. Playfully, but with total, controlled ownership of both the stillness and the storm, they create music that sounds entirely organic and original, and which in the course of the album’s running time makes words and concepts such as “genres”, “genre blends”, and “fusion” seem oddly irrelevant.

The album was recorded at Rainbow Studios in December 2023 with Jørn Pedersen as producer and Martin Abrahamsen as engineer. The album will be released on Simax on September 20 on LP, CD, Dolby Atmos, and digitally.