Andrew von Oeyen

Andrew von Oeyen is an American pianist who appears with orchestras across the United States and Europe as a soloist. In this pair of Grand Rapids Symphony concerts he performs Bernstein's Symphony No. 2, "The Age of Anxiety," which uses the piano as a solo voice woven through an orchestral symphony rather than a standalone concerto.

The Bernstein work is unusual: it is billed as a symphony, but the piano part is nearly continuous, shadowing and arguing with the orchestra rather than simply taking turns with it. Listeners should expect a jazzy, restless piano line that shifts mood quickly, from spare, questioning phrases to sudden bursts of nervous energy, mirrored by percussion and brass commentary. A pianist taking this on needs to move fluidly between accompanying and leading, since the piano often functions as one instrument inside the orchestral texture rather than the star out front. Expect clean articulation in the fast, syncopated passages and a sense of dialogue with individual orchestral sections. The rest of the program, Mazzoli's atmospheric orchestral piece and Barber's concise, dramatic Essay No. 2, frames the piano part with contrasting orchestral color, so the concert as a whole moves between purely orchestral writing and this more integrated piano-and-orchestra conversation.