For pianist Norman Krieger, it’s been a Beethoven kind of summer. Concerts in North Carolina, Virginia and his native Los Angeles, have seen him perform concertos and chamber music by the great German composer. Due in Colorado Springs this weekend as the featured guest for Amateur Pianists International’s 12th “Celebration of the Amateur Pianist,” his personal “Ludwig-fest” continues unabated.

The 55-year-old keyboard professional is well-known to local classical music lovers through his frequent guest performances with the Colorado Springs Philharmonic (he opened its season last year with the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1) and a previous stint as pianist’s organization’s main music man.

Here he talks about his love of Beethoven, the language of music and the joy of the unexpected.

Gazette: What do you most remember about your last time at the “Celebration of the Amateur Pianist?”

Krieger: It was 2009 and API was also doing its amateur pianist competition. I don’t think I can recall ever being in an emotional atmosphere where I felt that every single person was madly in love with music and the opportunity to play. When you’re in a conservatory, a university, or a competition, it’s such a different feeling and I felt that every person I came in contact with in the Springs was there for all the right reasons. Here, you get these fanatics. They just have the passion.

Gazette: Were you personally impacted?

Krieger: Yeh. I would say it was a wonderful reminder of why I fell in love with music when I was a kid and why I still love music: the miraculous sounds, the different styles, the intellectual challenges.

My outside-of-the-box feeling is that music transcends international boundaries and languages. It’s the universal language. You don’t have to really even know anything about classical music to love it. I’ve met a lot of educated musicians I find really boring as people (and) who I don’t want to hang out with. And then I find people who know nothing about music and they are more intuitive, more passionate and connected to what they are listening to. You walk into a museum with an art curator and he’s telling you about this brush stroke and that and you want to say “fine.” Then you walk through with someone who says “Oh my god, he was in love with that woman. You can just tell!”

Gazette: Is there a specific classical composer that inspires that kind or reaction in you?

Krieger: Well, Beethoven is my favorite composer. For me, he falls right smack in the nucleus of the experiments in sound over the last thousand years. Bach certainly does. He is like the roots of the tree. Brahms for me…

Gazette: Did you just pick the three Bs?

Krieger: It’s so boring yeh, yeh.

Gazette: What about Lazarof?

Krieger: I find him very refreshing and very different. He has said that musicians should experiment and they should not be restricted by fear of expression. When you think you’re going to go right, he goes left. When you think he’ll go louder, he goes softer. There’s a lot of very unpredictable moments in his music. And yet, it works. I find his music to be a kind of kaleidoscope. Like Beethoven, he’s often very cruel to the hand. I’m very curious how the Springs’ audience will react.