Schumann was a mere 25 when writing his First Piano Sonata – as the Norwegian, Leif Ove Andsnes (only a couple of years older himself) never lets us forget. His recording is one of the most refreshing I’ve ever heard in its youthful lightness of heart. Not for a moment are you aware of the strain for this composer, by nature still then a miniaturist, in meeting the Procrustean demands of sonata form. With fastish tempo and delectably light, scintillating fingerwork he dances through the first movement’s sometimes all-too-persistent fandango rhythm, and though adopting an unspecified slower tempo for the smoother second subject maintains an unbroken continuity of flow from first note to last. The Aria sings with a spring-like wonderment and grace. And even if the tongue-in-cheek pomposity at the start of the “Intermezzo” section is not fully relished, his lightness and clarity of texture and his rhythmic buoyancy win the day in the Scherzo, and yet again in the finale, which in heavier hands can so easily sound protracted.
The Fantasie, completed just three years later, comes across with arrestingly impulsive immediacy. Andsnes’s extreme contrasts of urgency and poetic musing in the first movement might be thought over-episodic, but the requested fantasy and passion are all there. The central movement is brilliantly excitable even if lacking an essential underlying rhythmic stability. And his acute response to every passing innuendo makes the finale a truly moving human confession – albeit in a different world from Pollini’s trance-like, superhuman inner calm. Apart from brief loss of refinement in the Fantasie’s moments of heightened fervour, the tone-quality of the recording matches the distinction of the playing.'