The following Reflections on Poetry and Music is the result of a conversation between the Danish poet Lene Henningsen and the Norwegian Pianist Leif Ove Andsnes.

     Seurat. Seascape at Port en Bessin.1888

The issue here is a new form of cognition, with a departure point in an older form of cognition, thereby creating another pattern, so that you have a new form of insight.

Where will this new form of cognition crystallize? Around a specific work? A specific memory? A situation?

Great titles fly through the air like snow. “A Winter Night A Traveler”, "Dichtung und Wahrheit", "Albumblätter”, "Names Writ On Water“. Possible beginnings seem infinite, because the issue is poetry and music.

- Poetry is elevated through the element of music.

Leif Ove Andsnes speaks about the three elements in music: Melody, harmonics and rhythm. Without the last two, the melody is helpless. Harmonics and rhythm help pace the music. But often rhythm is the more important element. In the Viennese classical tradition and in the Romantic tradition (where the poetic element is so strong), the three elements balance themselves out. Even so, one can perform miracles by working with rhythm. For rhythm is the very foundation of music.

- Poetry becomes multi-dimensional through the element of music.

Andsnes talks about his work with music: The first stage in learning a piece focuses on the greater picture. The music has to become a part of your body. Fingers have memory. Later on he works with all the elements. The physical movements are naturally the determining factor: an ascending melody makes you play more forcefully; you tend to play a descending melody more lightly. It is a combination of relating to the physical aspects of playing, while at the same time trying to play as naturally as possible. But you can insert breaks into this natural progression, quite deliberately, as Mozart often does.

- Through the musical element, poetry wishes to create space for thoughts, feelings, memories, life.

Andsnes seems to want to do the same. He is really like no one else in that he explores every space and subtle variance within the music he plays. Being alert while, at the same time, intuitive. Ideas arise in many ways, by studying the music, by playing it, listening to it, experimenting with touch. He is obsessed with the desire of creating something that breathes and of providing a space in which everything in the music can reveal itself.

That space can be described as both horizontal and vertical space. A concert in New York with the conductor Riccardo Muti becomes something different, because Muti is able to create a perfect balance between the vertical and the horizontal in the music he conducts. (Often a conductor either gets carried away horizontally, or he beats out the time vertically).

The piano itself is a vertical instrument, with “hammers on strings”, very unlike string instruments, which are of a more horizontal character. Therefore swaying is so important when playing the piano.

- Poetry expresses its longing to be liberated through the element of music.

Andsnes recognizes this; that you wish, in creating a space, to liberate both yourself and others. You want to escape what is claustrophobic in life. This is a deeply human longing. To feel free. To let go.

- Poetry gets condensed in the element of music.

Andsnes talks about recording Edvard Grieg’s Lyric Pieces. This took place at Trollhaugen, in Grieg’s house. He played on Grieg’s old piano. These lyric pieces are like a diary and work very well as a cyclical form. They represent a journey through different landscapes. The melodies are simple folk songs, and are made into something different by Grieg’s use of harmonies (modal harmonies). Here, a certain tension is born.

Listening to these pieces is like following, with the melody, a mountain trail, and encountering again and again new vistas, through the harmonies. The form, A-B-A resembles the literary form home-away from home-home. There is a very beautiful piece called “Homesickness”. The A-part is slow and wistful; the B-part is quick and sparkling. It is exactly there the recurring A-part is able to express pain, melancholy, nostalgia. The piece becomes a condensed piece of life. This is the advantage of the short form.

- The poem frees itself from the bonds of time through the element of music.

… Still it is probably easier to be a classical piece of music than a classical poem…perhaps also because interpretation, the communication of the work plays such an important role; a fine interpretation keeps the work fresh.

For Andsnes, it has always been a matter of deliberation as to how much a pianist should try to fulfill the wishes the composer had during his own lifetime. It was a totally different world, another sound, a smaller sound. You had a toothache your entire adulthood. You never took a bath! It is a vain endeavor to try to sanctify the authentic sound. What works, is what makes the music come alive. Knowledge and intuition is what must invigorate the music today.

- Poetry finds its real being within the element of music.

In the universe of the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, music is the highest art form: It doesn’t represent or “mime” reality, as other art forms do, it is reality. It is life, an expression of life’s deepest and most exalted will. Consequently, in Schopenhauer’s philosophical system programme music is banned, in that it endevours to resemble something. (At a later stage in this same system the entire will is written off. But the value of music as the immediate experiencing of freedom is retained).

Despite Schopenhauer’s reservations, Andsnes nevertheless defends  programme music: It is able to speak for itself, like the Dante sonata by Liszt, or The Creation by Haydn. Music can be a most beautiful illustration.

- Poetry becomes traveling, movement through the element of music.

Not necessarily an outer journey. It can just as well be an inner movement. So as not to take root and stagnate. Andsnes travels so much, that this way of living becomes a home. But this does not necessarily imply genuine movement. While it is true you receive outer impulses when traveling, it is not certain you are in motion because of that.

- Life and poetry are reconciled through the element of music.

With Andsnes, music and life are quite naturally interconnected. Everything has to be filled with life, with your own life… But the idea of either a youthful or a mature interpretation goes against the grain. There isn’t one uniformly positive progression. There are phases. A youthful interpretation can also be fascinating, and intuitively profound. As a human being, you may feel you are developing higher and higher into something more free, open. But this is not something that is absolute unequivocal.

- Poetry becomes openness through the musical element.

Freedom in one’s consciousness. Does a poet know the musician’s striving towards perfection, this verve, so that freedom can arise? Where is the poetic rehearsal room located? In his consciousness?

Andsnes never knows in a concert when this verve, this freedom will arise. It cannot be programmed. He can prepare, perfect, get to a place he wants to be. But the moment just happens.

- Poetry becomes complete through the element of music.

Remembering the comparison between poems and gravestones, stone monuments. They are committed to paper (or earth) in memory of an experience, a person, a place, a moment (often experiences that seem at a glance too big) as small stories, complete in themselves.

Thus Andsnes’ collection of encores, Horizons could be listened to as an anthology of short piano pieces, very different in character from one another. And yet each is a kind of “good-bye, see you later”: Encores rounding out in the face of new horizons… Something beautiful, diversified, condensed.

Bach’s Ich Ruf ‘ Zu Dir stands out in absolute clarity. Andsnes has played it at funerals as well. In concert he will most often play works of a certain gravitas, like, for example, the final sonatas of Beethoven.

- Poetry becomes dialogue through the element of music.

Music is dialogue. A solo work is a dialogue in itself. Chamber music is dialogue as a way of life, a natural means of creating a break in the internal conversation so as to embark on a conversation with others.

Andsnes is co-organizer of The Chamber Music Festival in Risør, Norway. The concerts take place in a small baroque church, everything is extremely intimate, time stands still, and everybody in the room is included.

Chamber music has to be the ideal form of dialogue. The movement from “me” to  “you” and “us”. Like the poetic dream of going beyond. Like  philosophical transcendence, like the duende in flamenco, like magic…

- Poetry becomes a door into magic through the element of music.

Magical moments require time and absorption, awareness. Maybe absorption is relegated to a niche today. Perhaps it is constantly seeking out new forms, in the same way our cognitive processes assume new forms. A profound human longing, which also includes magic, is more bound to the stars than to history... With musicians like Leif Ove Andsnes it is in safe hands.