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For the Chopin Ballades, Leif Ove Andsnes knew he had to choose the right space / Borneo Bulletin

When he sat down to his longtime goal of recording Chopin's famously demanding Ballades, the pianist Leif Ove Andsnes knew he had to choose the right space. The Norwegian virtuoso, who has spent the past season as the artiste-in-residence at the New York Philharmonic, has developed an intuition on the relationship between settings and the great composers whose works he brings to life. "With Beethoven, for instance, I feel that he speaks to the crowd – he's sort of delivering a speech in an extremely profound way. But with Chopin – and the same with Schumann – you feel it's very much between two persons," Andsnes told AFP over lunch near the Philharmonic's home at Lincoln Centre.

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