Pianist Jonathan Biss announces the release of new album Beethoven/5 Vol. 3, featuring Timo Andres's The Blind Banister, out on Orchid Classics, April 18 

The recording, which pairs Timo Andres's The Blind Banister with Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 2, features the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and conductor Pekka Kuusisto

The Blind Banister was a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize

March 19, 2025 - Renowned pianist and Beethoven specialist Jonathan Biss announces the release of the third volume in his acclaimed Beethoven/5 project, out April 18 on Orchid Classics. The recording includes Timo Andres's third piano concerto, The Blind Banister, paired with Beethoven's Piano Conceto No. 2, and features Biss with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and conductor Pekka Kuusisto.

The Blind Banister, which was written for and dedicated to Biss, was a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize and received widespread acclaim following its premiere with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra in 2015. The work, inspired by Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 2, explores the tension between tradition and modernity. Biss’s interpretation of The Blind Banister has been praised for its intellectual depth and sensitivity, underscoring his ability to illuminate connections between past and present.

Andres's composition takes its title from 'Schubertiana,' by the Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer, and envisions a 'blind banister that finds its way in the darkness.' Said Andres: "The Blind Banister is, in a sense, a whole piece built over this fault line in the Beethoven, trying to peer into the gap. I tried as much as possible to start with those same extremely simple elements Beethoven uses; however, my piece is not a pastiche or an exercise in palimpsest. It doesn’t quote or reference Beethoven. There are some surface similarities to his concerto (a three-movement structure, a B–flat tonal center), but these are mostly red herrings. The best way I can describe my approach to writing the piece is: I started writing my own cadenza to Beethoven’s concerto, and ended up devouring it from the inside out."

Jonathan Biss said: “Timo Andres can take the most innocuous motive and simultaneously look at it under a microscope and through a telescope. It’s a spectacular talent, one displayed throughout his piano concerto. While there are no direct quotations in it, the piece is based on certain ideas Timo has about the way in which Beethoven’s cadenza corresponds to his piece, and the way in which their different languages come together."

The Blind Banister was commissioned by the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts, and the Orchestra of St. Luke's. The world premiere was given by Jonathan Biss, with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra on November 27, 2015.

The recording also includes Biss's performance of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 2. Biss has long been recognized for his insightful approach to Beethoven, having performed and recorded the complete sonatas over the course of his career. His scholarship, including the bestselling book Unquiet: My Life with Beethoven and his Coursera lecture series on the composer, has cemented his role as a leading authority on Beethoven’s piano works. With this new release, he continues to bring fresh perspectives to these seminal pieces, capturing their complexity, innovation, and humanity.

In 2015, pianist Jonathan Biss initiated the Beethoven/5 commissioning project with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and more than fifteen other orchestras, resulting in a groundbreaking collaboration over ten years. The project yielded five extraordinary new piano works by some of today’s most significant composers, responding to Beethoven’s own concerti.

JONATHAN BISS

Pianist Jonathan Biss is recognized globally for his “impeccable taste and a formidable technique” (The New Yorker). Praised by The Boston Globe as “an eloquent and insightful music writer,” Biss published his fourth book, Unquiet: My Life with Beethoven, in 2020. The book was the first Audible Original by a classical musician and one of Audible’s top audiobooks of the year.

Biss has appeared as a soloist with some of the world’s foremost orchestras, including the Los Angeles and New York Philharmonics, the Boston Symphony, the Royal Concertgebouw, the London Symphony and more. He has served as the Co-Artistic Director of the Marlboro Music School and Festival alongside pianist Mitsuko Uchida since 2018. He served on the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music for ten years, and has been a guest professor at schools such as the Guildhall SOMAD and the New England Conservatory of Music. Biss is also the author of Unquiet: My Life with Beethoven, in which he examines music and his own life’s journey through the lens of Beethoven’s last piano sonatas.

Coinciding with the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth in 2020, Biss recorded the composer’s complete piano sonatas, and offered insights to all 32-landmark works via his free, online Coursera lecture series Exploring Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas. In March 2020, Biss gave a virtual recital presented by 92NY, wherein he performed Beethoven’s last three piano sonatas for an online audience of more than 280,000 people. In 2024, Biss participated in Princeton University Concert’s Healing Through Music Series, appearing alongside author Adam Haslett for a panel discussion on anxiety, depression, and creativity. Biss is the recipient of numerous honors, including the Leonard Bernstein Award, the Andrew Wolf Memorial Chamber Music Award, an Avery Fisher Career Grant, the Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award, and a Gilmore Young Artist Award. His albums for EMI won the Diapason d’Or de l’Année and Edison awards. He was an artist-in-residence on American Public Media’s Performance Today and was the first American chosen to participate in the BBC’s New Generation Artist program.

Biss is a third-generation professional musician; his grandmother is Raya Garbousova, one of the first famous female cellists (for whom Samuel Barber composed his Cello Concerto), and his parents are violinist Miriam Fried and violist/violinist Paul Biss. Growing up surrounded by music, Biss began his piano studies at age six, with his first musical collaborations alongside his mother and father. He studied with Evelyne Brancart at Indiana University and Leon Fleisher at the Curtis Institute of Music.

SWEDISH RADIO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

More than 100 exceptional musicians make up the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, a multiple-award-winning ensemble renowned for its high artistic standard and stylistic breadth. The first radio orchestra was founded in 1925, coinciding with Sweden’s first national radio broadcasts.

Daniel Harding has been Music Director of the SRSO since 2007, with 2019 seeing him appointed as the orchestra’s first ever Artistic Director. His extensive tenure will last throughout the 2024/25 season. “It is increasingly rare for the relationship between a conductor and an orchestra not only to last for more than a decade, but to keep growing,” Harding says about working with the orchestra, “it is also rare for an orchestra of the highest musical standard to also very obviously want to keep on growing.”

The orchestra tours regularly, receiving invitations from all over Europe and the world. Recent highlights include two programmes at the Musikverein in Vienna, with programmes including Robert Schumann’s Manfred performed with the Wiener Singverein and actor Cornelius Obonya, and Schumann’s Violin Concerto with Christian Tetzlaff. Additionally, Harding and the SRSO performed an all-Sibelius programme at the Sibelius Festival in Lahti, Finland, featuring María Dueñas in Sibelius’ Violin Concerto.

Upcoming projects include playing major works by Mahler, Strauss, Alfvén and Mozart together with Christian Gerhaher and Maria João Pires, both regular musical partners of Harding and the orchestra. Venues include the Elbphilharmonie, Concertgebouw, KKL Luzern, Philharmonie de Paris and Müpa Budapest.

The SRSO remains a cornerstone of Swedish public service broadcasting, its concerts heard weekly on the classical radio P2 and regularly on Swedish national public television SVT. During the pandemic, its much appreciated on-demand streamed concerts on Berwaldhallen Play brought further worldwide attention to the orchestra.

The Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra has an extensive and acclaimed recording catalogue. Recent releases include Jesper Nordin’s triptych Röster for orchestra, works by Britten featuring Andrew Staples and the orchestra’s own solo hornist Chris Parkes, and Eduard Tubin’s Double Bass Concerto with the orchestra’s solo bassist Rick Stotijn. Music Director Daniel Harding’s other recent, noteworthy recordings with the SRSO include Schönberg’s Verklärte Nacht and Violin Concerto with Isabelle Faust, Brahms’ Ein deutsches Requiem featuring Christiane Karg and Matthias Goerne, and Mahler’s Symphony No. 5.

Two of the SRSO’s former chief conductors, Herbert Blomstedt and Esa-Pekka Salonen, have since been named Conductors Laureate and make regular appearances with the orchestra.

PEKKA KUUSISTO

Violinist, conductor, and composer Pekka Kuusisto is renowned for his artistic freedom and fresh approach to repertoire. Kuusisto is Artistic Director of Norwegian Chamber Orchestra, Principal Guest Conductor & Artistic Co-Director of Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra and Principal Guest Conductor of the Gothenburg Symphony from season 2025/26. He is also Artistic Best Friend of Die Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen.

As an enthusiastic advocate of contemporary music and a gifted improviser, he regularly engages with people across the artistic spectrum. Uninhibited by conventional genre boundaries and noted for his innovative programming, recent projects have included collaborations with Hauschka and Kosminen, Dutch neurologist Erik Scherder, pioneer of electronic music Brian Crabtree, eminent jazz-trumpeter Arve Henriksen, juggler Jay Gilligan, accordionist Dermot Dunne and folk artist Sam Amidon.

Kuusisto regularly appears with orchestras such as Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchester, Berliner Philharmoniker, San Francisco Symphony, The Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, NHK Symphony Orchestra Tokyo, Cincinnati and Boston Symphony and Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra.

Equally active in studio, Kuusisto was featured in two releases on Sony – Bryce Dessner’s album SOLOS where he performed composer’s Ornament and Crime for solo violin, and on Anna Clyne’s and The Knights album Shorthand performing Prince of Clouds for two violins. In 2023, Kuusisto’s releases included an album for BIS on which he features as conductor of Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra performing the first recording of Jaakko Kuusisto’s Symphony, Op.39, and another for Alba as violinist with Malin Broman and Ostrobothnian Chamber Orchestra performing works by Tarrodi, Byström, Larsson and Zinovjev. In 2022, Kuusisto released his first album as conductor, partnering with Vilde Frang and Die Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, presenting the Stravinsky and Beethoven Concerti for Warner (for which he was nominated in the concerto category of the 2023 Gramophone Awards) and as soloist performing the world premiere recording of Ades’ Märchentänze for violin and orchestra with Nicholas Collon and Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra for Ondine.

TIMO ANDRES

Timo Andres (b. 1985, Palo Alto, CA) is a composer and pianist who grew up in rural Connecticut and lives in Brooklyn, NY. Recent highlights have included a solo recital debut for Carnegie Hall and the world premiere of a piano concerto for Aaron Diehl at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, led by John Adams. Andres’s orchestrations and arrangements were featured in Justin Peck’s 2024 production of Sufjan Stevens’s Illinoise completed an acclaimed limited run on Broadway at the St. James Theater; Timo received a Tony Nomination for his work.

Timo Andres is a trusted collaborator of Philip Glass, serving as advisor and editor of a 2023 edition of the Etudes published by Artisan. Andres has performed the Etudes at Lincoln Center, the Chicago Humanities Festival, the Music Academy of the West, for NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts and elsewhere.

Notable works include Everything Happens So Much for the Boston Symphony; Strong Language for the Takács Quartet, commissioned by Carnegie Hall and the Shriver Hall Concert Series; Steady Hand, a two-piano concerto commissioned by the Britten Sinfonia premiered at the Barbican by Andres and David Kaplan; and The Blind Banister, a concerto for Jonathan Biss, which was a 2016 Pulitzer Prize Finalist.

A Nonesuch Records artist, Andres has released a series of acclaimed albums on the label; his most recent release was named on Best of 2024 lists from The New York Times, Gramophone, and NPR. In January 2025, he was announced as winner of Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Elise. L. Stoeger Prize.

A Yale School of Music graduate, he is a Yamaha/Bösendorfer Artist and is on the composition faculty at the Mannes School of Music at the New School.

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