There is so much to admire about Leif Ove Andsnes's playing - the effortless technical facility, the clear musical intelligence and, most attractive of all, the total lack of self-regard - that his failure to communicate seems almost inexplicable. Then again, perhaps it's just me; the enthusiasm with which his Barbican recital was received demonstrated that he can communicate to many people, in a way that makes him one of classical music's hottest properties.
The highlight of the evening was the elegance and careful shading Andsnes brought to the four pieces in Janacek's In the Mists. Even there, though, he seemed to miss the sense of the ebb and flow, the tiny nuances that map out the emotional territory of each piece. In Schubert's D major Sonata D850, too, that gap between immaculate surface and expressive depth was even more marked. Andsnes convincingly identified the slow movement as the sonata's emotional heart, but never shaped it into a single utterance; the first movement seemed breathless while the finale was lacking in simple charm, and its throwaway ending was thrown away.
There was plenty of charm in the pair of encores - a fluffy piece of Mompou's and one of Schumann's Op 28 Romances - but Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition offered a different challenge. Here, some of Andsnes's playing was dazzling: the faster virtuoso numbers - Tuileries, Ballet of the Chicks, The Market at Limoges - were dispatched with clarity and elan. But again, the characterisation was only skin deep: nothing was rushed, but everything seemed to be taken fractionally too fast for detail to register. The sense of accumulating excitement that should spill into the majestic release of the final Great Gate of Kiev was never there. Instead of textured oil paintings, these were only picture postcards.
