Ahead of his Abu Dhabi Festival appearance, pianist Leif Ove Andsnes talks about his four-year obsession with Beethoven

Veteran pianist Leif Ove Andsnes says Beethoven’s compositions are a universal language.

Leif Ove Andsnes has spent the past four years performing nothing but Beethoven’s piano concertos. Hiroyuki Ito / Getty Images

Leif Ove Andsnes says a key event in his life transformed the way he plays Beethoven – having children.

Beethoven is perhaps best known for his grandeur and sophistication – but the veteran Norwegian pianist Andsnes, who makes his Abu Dhabi Festival debut on Thursday, March 26, says the great romantic composer has a direct, playful quality that he only really grasped since becoming a father.

“My life has changed drastically in the last four years,” he says. “I now have a 4-year-old daughter and one-and-a-half-year-old twins. I’ve found myself having a completely different life.

“There is this childlike quality to Beethoven that I have come to notice, this directness of expression. He doesn’t filter too much what he says, he just says it immediately – like a child.

“Playing with my children feels the same as working with this incredibly spontaneous and childlike music. Now that I have other responsibilities in life, I feel stronger, I take time to appreciate a certain freedom in the music more.”

To say that Andsnes has recently had time to think about Beet­hoven is one of the biggest understatements. The 44-year-old, who will perform the German master's Piano Concerto No 5, also known as the Emperor Concerto, at Emirates Palace, has spent the past four years in the throes of an extremely ambitious, almost monomaniacal project he calls "The Beethoven Journey".

As the high point in an already stellar career, the project has seen Andsnes concentrate on performing the great German’s works and nothing else – focusing specifically on his five piano concertos. Andsnes has recorded three albums – compiled in a box set last year – and travelled the world performing more than 130 concerts of the same material. Oh, and he did all this while conducting the orchestra that played with him during his recordings.

After this marathon, you could forgive Andsnes for suffering from a touch of Beethoven fatigue. But he is not. In fact, when one talks to the pianist about the music he has been playing so much, he speaks with such ringing enthusiasm that he makes me want to listen to his brilliant album right there and then.

“My view of Beethoven has expanded – he’s become even greater for me,” says Andsnes. “When I started and looked at my plans for the next few years, I thought: ‘My goodness, will I be as interested in these pieces in four years?’

“That’s been an enormous relief, an epiphany for me, to feel how potent this music is. Beethoven has a real human message – such ambition.

“He really wanted the music to make a difference on a large scale – he thought that music could change the world.”

Whether Andsnes sees himself as a world-changer is another matter. He may be one of the world’s best-rated pianists, but he is self-effacing, possessing the professional modesty that’s surprisingly common among leading classical musicians.

The child of music teachers, Andsnes grew up in a small Norwegian town and still lives a quiet life not far from his birthplace, in Bergen.

This modest domesticity might seem to be at odds with the itinerant life of the classical superstar, but Andsnes is grounded by an unshakeable belief in the value of what he brings to the audience. It’s a belief that seems to be reinforced by the positive response he has received while playing across the world.

“When you play music such as Beethoven, it seems like such a universal language that it hits people everywhere, whether it’s in a country like Austria, where this kind of music was born, or in Asia,” he says.

“There are some differences, of course. In Japan the response is very silent, as they go off into a sort of meditation. In the US, it’s a little more noisy, but very enthusiastic.

“But overall, the emotional reaction is not all that different. It’s still so direct – the music is still as relevant now as when it was written, 200 years ago.”

• Leif Ove Andsnes performs at Emirates Palace on Thursday, March 26, at 8pm. Tickets cost from Dh125 and are available at www.timeouttickets.com