Leif Ove Andsnes directing two great Mozart piano concertos from the keyboard may be the chief attraction when the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra comes to London's Cadogan Hall on Friday to celebrate its 40^th birthday. It was certainly the bait which lured me to Oslo last week. But in talking to the Renaissance man who has led the ensemble since its foundation in 1977, Terje Tønnesen, I discovered that what I heard – including a Haydn symphony just as revelatory as the Mozart concertos – was just the tip of the creative iceberg. Londoners will get a greater slice of that individuality when the NCO play Prokofiev's "Classical" Symphony and Grieg's Holberg Suite from memory.

I found out more from Tønnesen the morning after the concert. Which in itself was predictably excellent, but brought a surprise of a different kind. Having admired Edvard Munch's The Sun on the box cover of an LP set featuring Schoenberg's Gurrelieder, I'd wondered where it was housed. I had no idea it was the centrepiece, the high altar, as it were, of a mural series in Oslo's main temple of learning, the University Aula where the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra gives the majority of its concerts on home territory.

The sun glints in the distance as you approach through the vestibule (pictured above). Once entering the hall itself between the columns, two more large-scale scenes complement the al fresco idyll, clearly set on the Norwegian coast with its rocks and islets in midsummer: on the left, "History" is celebrated by an old man telling stories to a young boy, while "Alma Mater" on the right has a mother nourishing her children. Further panels celebrate naked youth in the sunshine. Predictably there was uproar among the academic worthies, and the unveiling didn't take place until 1916, seven years after Munch was announced the winner of the university competition to decorate the aula.

These are joyous scenes for Munch, unfairly labelled a miserabilist; at the time of painting them he had just emerged from confinement in a Copenhagen psychiatric clinic, positive and full of life. They couldn't help but inform the more joyous of the scores on last week's second Aula programme, chiefly Mozart's K482 E flat Piano Concerto, and Haydn's Symphony No. 95. The mystery of the most recent work on the programme, Norwegian composer Magnar Åm's 1977 tone-poem Study of a Psalm Melody from Luster, was also in tune with the great outdoors pictured above it.

Andsnes' relationship with the NCO goes back a long way. The ensemble's status as a self-styled "project orchestra" gathering together many of Norway's finest instrumentalists for intensive periods of work and touring has included invitations to serve as guest artistic leader to the likes of Steven Isserlis, Isabelle van Keulen and Anthony Marwood, and of course Andsnes, who over five seasons performed some of the greatest Mozart concertos, followed by the five Beethovens in the warm surroundings of the Norwegian National Opera, interpretations we know well from his visit to the Proms with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra.

Now he's added two more to the Mozart list. As he told me over tea before the concert (rehearsal pictured above), “This is a completely different story for me. The D minor [K466] was the first concerto I played with a professional orchestra, in Stavanger when I was 14, and it's always been part of my life, so now it’s like coming back to an old friend. Whereas the E flat is completely new to me, I played it for the first time two weeks ago, and I'm so in love with it.” We talk about the extraordinary finale, its lively rondo coming to a halt to accommodate a heaven-sent, woodwind-led slow serenade of a minuet. “It's so operatic and so like a farewell towards the end. It must have been his own 'Jeunehomme' Concerto [No. 9], the earliest of the three E flat concertos, which inspired the pattern of that grand finale.”

I wondered whether intense study of the Beethoven concertos had changed anything. “It’s difficult to say. Of course the D minor is quite Beethovenian, the one he admired the most, and loved very much. And I’m playing Beethoven’s cadenza in the first movement, Hummel’s in the finale. What I felt during those years with Beethoven was how important it is to express things really clearly, because the intention is so clear all the time, and of course in Mozart there is more ambiguity. In the first movement of the E flat concerto, for instance, when I started to study it, I realised it’s not clear what is foreground and what is background [he sings a legato line for the winds, and another for the violins] – it's just a web. It's very fascinating, you can choose what to emphasise, but both are actually equally important, and that's what is so great, that you have these voices. But it's still important to be understood, so maybe I bring with me some of that. Whether that has to do with Beethoven or whether I'm becoming more confident with this music as a whole, I don't know.”

As both musician and as human being, Andsnes never does flash, never comes out with an insincere word. His pianism flowed out of the orchestral playing he conducted and back again, with that legendary evenness in fast runs, only dominating in the cadenzas. I'm not sure that the one in the first movement of the E flat major was entirely organic within itself – Andsnes hadn’t found a cadenza that suited him, and went along with the work of his EMI producer John Fraser, of which he’s very fond – but Beethoven's for the D minor was magnificent on its own terms. And in any case the orchestral playing, especially in the finale, was meatier, more Beethoven-like than you'd expect from a chamber orchestra playing Mozart. With, of course, wonderful work from the woodwind – exceptionally so from first oboist, Mizuho Yoshii, who somehow managed to make us forget that there weren't clarinets, the real stars of the concertos featuring them, in the D minor work.

Never underestimate the difficulties and rewards of Haydn. Tønnesen told me the morning after how taken aback he'd been by the demands of Symphony No. 95, as quirky a work as any of its late counterparts – the subtle tempo changes, the pick-ups after dramatic pauses (which allowed the sound to resonate in the Aula acoustics: the orchestra's CEO, Per Erik Kise Larsen, thinks they're a little harder since the Munchs were remounted with boards behind them, but it's still a near-ideal venue for a chamber orchestra). At any rate, all the maneouvres were achieved with a decisiveness and a personality I learnt more about from Tønnesen in the NCO's new office space, part of a splendidly converted 19th century bank with Venetian affectations on the outside. The conversion, which houses many key arts organisations based in Oslo, has handsome rehearsal spaces, several rooms good enough to allow for chamber music and a ground-floor hall where the NCO can hold concerts more relaxed than in the teetotal Aula; there's a bar at the back.

Tønnesen (pictured above) is clearly a questing soul. His first ambition was to be an artist; married to an actor, Hilde Grythe, he composes incidental music for plays and has also enlisted dramatic help in trying to get the players to break down what he calls “the fourth wall” between them and the audience. Dramatic readings, most recently from Tolstoy’s harrowing novella The Kreutzer Sonata to inform Tonnesen’s string transcription of the Janáček quartet based on the story of jealousy and murder, enhance the experience (a new CD set of both Janáček quartets and selections from the Tolstoy, in both Norwegian and English, has just been released).

It’s all about communication. As concert-master of the Oslo Philharmonic, Tønnesen found himself frustrated by the low level of understanding which results from “three rehearsals and a performance”. That led to a crisis, not long after he’d founded the NCO, in which he seriously thought about giving up as a musician, only to be saved by a Swedish film, The Brothers Mozart, which spelled out to him the essence of creativity. There have been some ground-breaking projects with the NCO, chiefly “The Gates of Hell”, for which the players studied yoga and drama to emulate Rodin’s figures in the first half of the evening, the audience encouraged to walk around and study them, and played Strauss’s Metamorphosen in the second – from memory. If you can memorise that, and Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht, you can memorise anything.

Score-less performance is catching on over here: the Aurora Orchestra and Nicholas Collon have done it several times, with the greatest success at the Proms. It's not a gimmick, like colourful dress, cool lighting or letting the audience bring in drinks to encourage the young. Being able to communicate the inner meaning of the music both to your fellow-players and the audience is liberating. I witnessed the vivacious leadership of each of the string sections in the Oslo concert; but there, the score still ruled. In London, you get a chance in the Prokofiev and the Grieg to see what the memorisation principle means in practice. Don’t miss it.

• The Norwegian Chamber Orchestra and Leif Ove Andsnes in concert at the Cadogan Hall on Friday 17 March
• Leeds Town Hall appearance on Saturday 18 March
• Mozart is the focus of Andsnes' second Rosendal Chamber Music Festival this summer
• More classical reviews on theartsdesk

Next page: the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra perform the Rigaudon from Grieg's Holberg Suite and Strauss's Metamorphosen without scores

Love is in the air. Today, men and women and boys and girls will be pondering how to say it with roses and cards and candlelit dinners: those three words that contain multitudes. As the old strip cartoon never quite got round to saying, love is... the human condition, which is why a good quantity of the culture we review on this site has to do with it. To help you get into the mood for romancing, we have asked our writers to identify something - anything - in the arts that embodies the L word. There are some obvious choices, some obscure ones, and a whole lot of omissions. So, in the comment box at the bottom of the page, please let us know what you would include in the list.

Casablanca (1942)

"Where I’m going, you can’t follow." Bogart-Bergman. Just for once, won’t Rick just let his heart hold sway? But no. Casablanca teaches us that the best cynics follow a higher order, their better natures. In that wonderful final moment, Bergman’s eyes and Bogart’s drawl create the perfect magnetic field. Gets me every time. Carole Woddis

"Some Enchanted Evening", South Pacific [1949]

As lush and emotionally expansive a song as the musical theatre knows, this breakout hit from Rodgers & Hammerstein’s tale of wartime romance builds to a pitch of such sustained ecstasy as to make immediate lovers of all who hear it. And leave it to Oscar Hammerstein II to come up with a lyric worth of Shakespeare in “fools give you reasons / wise men never try”.  I'll swoon to that. Matt Wolf

Brassaï: Lovers in a Café on the Place d'Italie, Paris (1932)

The Transylvanian photographer was the "eye of Paris", photographing everybody and everything from prostitutes to socialites, from Picasso to graffiti - and lovers. The delight of the couple, who look thoroughly experienced, is reflected in the café mirrors: flirtatious, tender, determined and accompanied by those essential accessories, wine, coffee, cigarettes, with the kiss just about to happen. Marina Vaizey

In a Lonely Place (1950)

Hadda Brooks is singing the blues "I Hadn't Anyone 'til You" in a Hollywood jazz bar. Languorously smoking at the opposite end of her grand piano, Dix Steele (Humphrey Bogart) and Laurel Gray (Gloria Grahame) can't stop appreciating each other – their lovemaking, which occurred perhaps an hour before, has left them in a satiated haze. When Dix lights a cigarette and pops it between Laurel's lips, then whispers something in her ear, she smiles naughtily. Their eyes indicate they are the only two people in the world, though the director Nicholas Ray pulls back the camera to show the room is full of lovers. It couldn't possibly last, for Grahame and Ray (whose marriage was collapsing), for Dix and Laurel, for any of us. But there, for a moment, is Intimacy Incarnate. Graham Fuller

Chet Baker: "My Funny Valentine" (1959)

If your love’s looks are laughable, there’s no better way to say so than Rodgers’ and Hart’s touching expression of quirky love. Miles Davis’ 1965 version is surely the most sophisticated, and there’s always Sinatra for the full treacle, but Chet Baker’s fragile, wispy, meandering voice captures the vulnerability perfectly. As a YouTuber comments beneath this video: “No technique. No vibrato. No range. Sketchy pitch. And absolutely beautiful.” Matthew Wright

The Bridges of Madison County (1995)

This is love as the road not taken. Clint Eastwood's film of the novel by Robert James Waller, about a sudden passion in the autumn of middle age, cast himself as a National Geographic photographer wandering into the life of Meryl Streep's Italian war bride in rural Iowa for four days of exquisite pleasure, then a lifetime of pain. Instead of diving out the car into the rain (see clip below), she does the decent thing and internalises his memory, and what could be more romantic than that? A Brief Encounter for the sexually incontinent Clinton era. Jasper Rees

Wayne County & the Electric Chairs: “Eddie & Sheena” (1978)

When cross-dressing eccentric Wayne County – later Jayne County – arrived in London from New York in 1977 to horn in on the punk scene, he immediately made a mark by naming his band The Electric Chairs. His first single was topped with the charming “F** Off”: refrain “If you don’t want to f*** me, f*** off”. Two releases on, in 1978, he had mellowed with “Eddie & Sheena”, the actually charming tale of the forbidden romance and marriage of teddy boy Eddie and punk rocker Sheena. Kieron Tyler

Constantin Brancusi: The Kiss (1916)

Brancusi carved his first version of The Kiss in 1907. It was a theme the Romanian-born sculptor returned to again and again, each time simplifying his depiction of the entwined lovers. Working briefly as Rodin’s assistant (though he soon left because “nothing grows under large trees”), Brancusi took the older artist’s naturalistic and erotically charged representation of the illicit lovers encountered in Dante’s Inferno to create a proto-Cubist, “primitivistic” masterpiece which is at once much sweeter and more innocent in tone and sentiment. Fisun Güner

Frederick Ashton: La Fille mal gardée (1960)

Ballet's most erotic moment - Lise, Widow Simone’s disobedient daughter, is locked into the house with the newly harvested corn-stacks and the menace of an unwanted marriage. She sadly mimes her dreams of true love and babies - when out of the cornstacks jumps her boyfriend, hidden among them. She’s horribly embarrassed. He gently kisses up one arm, then the other, more sexily. An orgiastic pas de deux is threatened... But Mother’s on the way back. Ismene Brown

Dirty Dancing (1987)

Yes, it's corny, but boy, is it sexy; two lovers meet across the social divide as holiday-camp dancer Johnny Castle (Patrick Swayze) teaches prissy Baby Houseman (Jennifer Grey) how to loosen up and dance. And that moment, at the very end of the film, when Johnny mouths the words “And I owe it all to you” as they dance to “(I've Had) The Time of My Life” - meltdown. Veronica Lee

 Ibrahim Ferrer: "Dos Gardenias"

“With these two gardenias I mean to say ‘I love you, I adore you”. “Dos Gardenias“ was a famous bolero written by Isolina Carrillo in the 1930s. Ibrahim Ferrer leant the song while playing with the Cuban bandleader Benny Moré, although in his earlier bands he only sang the fast numbers as his Santiago de Cuba accent from the east of the island was deemed inappropriate for romantic songs. What is poignant in the song is the transitoriness of the flowers, and indeed Ferrer was all too conscious of the fleeting, precious nature of love and life. Peter Culshaw

Much Ado About Nothing (1993)

There’s a particular scene in Kenneth Branagh’s 1993 adaptation of the Shakespeare comedy that wrenches the heart every time. Beatrice and Benedick, after a campaign of whispers and rumours orchestrated by their friends, finally admit they adore each other. “I love you with so much of my heart that none is left to protest,” declares Emma Thompson’s Beatrice to Branagh (at the time her real-life husband). Of course, this being Shakespeare, she then orders him to prove his love for her by killing his best friend... Caroline Crampton

Tchaikovsky/Bourne: Swan Lake Pas de deux (1875, 1995)

Poor old Pyotr Ilyich would have been amazed to see two men dancing his great Odette/Siegfried lovescene together with such tenderness – not a version likely to be seen in Russia today, though Matthew Bourne’s company did have an unhappy tour there. Bourne has often said that it’s not necessarily, or just, a gay romance: his prince’s longing for a masculine swan may just be reaching out for wildness and freedom from stifling convention. Everyone can understand that. But there’s a great love here in the taming of Adam Cooper’s dangerous beast, the coming-together as the solo cello finally joins the soaring violin (originally soprano and tenor in the operatic love duet Tchaikovsky adapted for his ballet). And the final moment where the swan carries the prince in his arms perhaps reminds us of Tom Daley’s odd coming-out speech when he said his lover made him feel "safe". David Nice

Dexter Gordon: "I Guess I'll Hang My Tears Out to Dry" (1962)

"S'il vous plaît, I would like to have the same thing he had." In the 1986 Tavernier film Round Midnight, Dexter Gordon in the character of Dale asked for a drink to make him fall over. Back in 1962, before leaving New York, he recorded this ballad of unrequited love for Blue Note, to make anyone lonely on Valentine's Day reach for their third Martini. Playing live, Dexter would have recited the words of the song before playing it. Tearfully, divinely, unforgettably. Sebastian Scotney

Continued overleaf

It’s hardly the lot of an art critic to be loved and admired, still less to speak to an audience that might reasonably be called “the public”. And how many will find their ideas still current 40 years on? All of these things can be said for John Berger, who has died aged 90, a man whose radical approach to looking at art was an absolute inspiration, and whose ideas were a solid presence in my childhood, woven into my early memories as surely as the pages of a photo album.

In this cut and paste world, we have become used to a multiplicity of images: screens, words and pictures from across the globe and across history flicker through our field of vision, competing for our attention with the natural world, the urban environment and our own memories, thoughts and dreams. The artist who most successfully began to express this new vision of the world was Robert Rauschenberg.

Compiled by an anonymous panel, the 15th edition of ArtReview magazine’s annual list of the most powerful and influential people in the art world was published on Thursday. And who doesn’t like lists, to poke fun at, to argue with – or perhaps even agree with?

Helaine Blumenfeld was living in Paris in the 1960s when she received an invitation from the Russian-born sculptor Ossip Zadkine to attend one of his salons. Zadkine had emigrated to Paris at the beginning of the century, evolving a style influenced first by Cubism and then African art. His most celebrated sculpture The Destroyed City (Rotterdam) had drawn comparisons with Picasso’s Guernica, while his social circle had included Henry Miller, Picasso, Brancusi and Modigliani.

This exhibition includes one of my images, so I hesitated when I was asked to write about it – but I only hesitated for a moment. I have learned that if you are reluctant to promote your own work other people are even more inclined in that direction, so you should seize any chance you get.

A lot of colour has drained out of world architecture with the unexpected death last week of Dame Zaha Hadid, aged 65. She was a vivid personality who made astonishing buildings, succeeding as an Iraqi-born woman in gaining worldwide renown from her adopted London.

The dazzling, controversial, fascinating exhibition In the Age of Giorgione at the Royal Academy inadvertently provides a striking example of an unavoidable and perhaps insoluble problem common to almost all exhibitions of painting – especially those with a high proportion of loans – in public museums and galleries.

The back cover of my book makes a big claim. “This book dares”, it says, “to predict the 100 most significant works of art made since the 1990s.” Although the tagline is an entirely accurate description of what I attempt to accomplish in my study of contemporary art, the phrase “dares to predict” has always made me a little anxious. It seems to suggest that the act of forecasting or foreseeing is deliberately provocative, defiant, or even risky.