On the Town: Many Irish musicians braved the winter cold to hear Norwegian concert pianist Leif Ove Andsnes play in Dublin this week for the first time.
"He's a wonderfully clear pianist, musically as well as technically," said pianist Hugh Tinney. "He's very gathered. Everything is terrifically focused. He has a great ease about him at the instrument".
"He's technically perfect but also he has a lovely resonant style," said Seán Braiden, a businessman and one of the directors on the board of the National Concert Hall, who was at the recital with his wife, Olive Braiden, chair of the Arts Council.
The highlight for many, including pianist Mairead Hurley, was hearing Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition.
"It's such an original piece, there's nothing like it," said Hurley.
But not for Michael Colgan, director of the Gate Theatre, who was looking forward to hearing Schubert's Piano Sonata in D major.
"I'm a Schubertian all my life . . . I love the fact that it [the piano sonata] is so complicated," he said. "This man is an extraordinary interpreter. The audience will be enthralled."
And they were.
Among those in the audience who enjoyed this fourth recital in the NCH/The Irish Times Celebrity Concert Series were pianist Therese Fahy, director of chamber music at the Royal Irish Academy of Music; the Norwegian ambassador, Truls Hanevold, and his wife, Leena; and pianist Finghin Collins.
As the applause continued, one former paediatrician from Trinity College Dublin, Prof Niall O'Donohoe, smiled with delight. "That was marvellous," he said. "I've never heard it played as well as that before."