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Igor Levit

Beethoven: The Late Piano Sonatas

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60 Minutes profiles Igor Levit
Igor Levit - An interview with BBC New Generation Artist
May It Return To The Heart (Igor Levit, pianist & Hans Ulrich Obrist, curator) | DLD 18
Bundesversammlung: Igor Levit im Interview am 13.02.22
1 Beethoven: 1. Etwas lebhaft, mit der innigsten Empfindung  
2 2. Lebhaft, marschmassig  
3 3. Langsam und sehnsuchtsvoll  
4 4. Geschwind, doch nicht zu sehr und mit Entschlossenheit  
5 1. Allegro  
6 2. Scherzo. Assai vivace  
7 3. Adagio sostenuto  
8 4. Largo Allegro risoluto  
9 1. Vivace ma non troppo  
10 2. Prestissimo  
11 3. Gesangvoll, mit innigster Empfindung  
12 1. Moderato cantabile molto espressivo  
13 2. Allegro molto  
14 3. Adagio ma non troppo  
15 1. Maestoso  
16 2. Arietta  
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"Unlike those technically brilliant young pianists who dazzle briefly and disappear, Levit is pre-eminently a real musician who seems built to last." – The Guardian

For the last three years, Igor Levit's name has been the first to be mentioned whenever there has been talk of the most exciting of the younger generation of pianists. What is so surprising about Levit is not only the maturity of his interpretations, but his boundless appetite for new repertoire of works as difficult and demanding as possible.  For his long awaited debut album, the twenty-six-year-old Levit has chosen some of the most challenging repertoire ever written for piano: Beethoven's last five piano sonatas. On his two-CD debut set, Levit is not just another young aspiring pianist releasing his debut album, but rather an outstanding artist who meets the exceptionally high demands of this extraordinary music. Levit's technical and artististic command in the difficult "Hammerklaviersonate" op. 106 is sure to be recognized as one of the most astounding accomplishments in recent history of Beethoven recordings. 

  • Igor Levit to play Satie's 'Vexations' for 16 hours straight in a unique event directed by Marina Abramovic / The Violin Channel
    Posted At: April 21, 2025
    With an alert and critical mind, Igor Levit places his art in the context of social events and understands it as inseparably linked to them. The New York Times describes Igor Levit as one of the “most important artists of his generation”, the New Yorker as a pianist “like no other”. Since the 2022-23 season, Igor Levit is the Co-Artistic Director of the Heidelberger Fru¨hling Musikfestival. With the Lucerne...

  • Igor Levit's explorative Brahms provides the highlight at Carnegie / New York Classical Review
    Posted At: January 13, 2025
    New York Classical Review's George Grella writes…….There’s a hoary cliché from rock journalism, where a guitarist is giving an interview and talks about how they dislike certain other players because they have great technique but no “feel.” While a cliché it makes sense in that there’s a logic to it, and some true examples, but it also misses the essential point that the more technique a musician has, the m...

  • Igor Levit's Brahms: Con. on Sony Classical shows a natural understanding with the orchestra / The Classic Review
    Posted At: November 7, 2024
    The Classic Review's Tal Agam writes…… The acoustics of Vienna’s Musikverein are regarded as among the finest in the world. Capturing an authentic recording in this venue requires exceptional skill, and many have achieved this successfully in the past, including Sony Classical, who release this new 3 CD set of Brahms two piano concertos and late solo works.I felt obliged to start with the above statement, a...

  • Igor Levit's Bourgie Hall recital of orchestral transcriptions reached unsuspected heights / Actual News Magazine
    Posted At: March 13, 2024
    Actual News Magazine's  writes…..Monday evening, Bourgie Hall hosted Igor Levit, one of the most fascinating pianists of the last 20 years. A recital mainly composed of orchestral transcriptions which reached unsuspected heights.Born in 1987, the Russian pianist who grew up in Germany is notably at the origin of a complete discography of Beethoven’s sonatas which, if it is not necessarily unanimous, re...

  • Igor Levitates Beethoven / The Boston Musical Intelligencer
    Posted At: March 5, 2023
    The Boston Musical Intelligencer's Julie Ingelfinger writes……Beethoven’s last three piano sonatas, Opus 109, 110, and 111, are offered worldwide every year through myriad concert venues. Indeed, the huge anticipation of Igor Levit’s interpretation of these iconic works made it hard to come by tickets for this Celebrity Series Concert, and for the capacity audience, given the nasty Seussian Oobleck outside, ...

  • Igor Levit returns to Carnegie Hall with 24 Shostakovich - Preludes and Fugues / The New York Times
    Posted At: October 19, 2022
    Igor Levit takes on a Shostakovich Kaleidoscope. The pianist Performed on Tuesday at Carnegie Hall, Manhattan.The New York Times - Seth Colter Walls writes….On his most recent album, “Tristan,” he casually posits a connection between the well-known grandness of Wagner and the less-recognized grandeur of the 20th-century modernist Hans Werner Henze. Outside the concert hall, Levit has mastered the art of soc...

  • Igor Levit back on road, changed by the pandemic / Associated Press
    Posted At: October 17, 2022
    Associated Press - RONALD BLUM writes…..Igor Levit arrives at Carnegie Hall changed by the pandemic. “We are not on our way back to normal. I don’t think we should be on our way back to anything. There is no normal out there," the 35-year-old pianist says, citing uncertainty around the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, energy shortages and climate change. "It’s not like we’re going through normal. So I find tra...

  • On 'Tristan' Igor Levit explores nocturnal themes of love and death, fear, ecstasy, loneliness & redemption / GRAMOPHONE
    Posted At: October 7, 2022
    The pianist explores the music of Richard Wagner, Franz Liszt, Gustav Mahler & Hans Werner Henze. Includes his first concerto recording with the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig under Franz Welser-Möst.The five works that feature on Igor Levit’s latest double album span a period of 135 years that extends from around 1837 to 1973. Very different genres are represented here. Only one of these works was origina...

  • Igor Levit's 'Tristan makes The New York Times '5 Classical Music Albums You Can Listen to Right Now'
    Posted At: September 29, 2022
    On Igor Levit’s upcoming album “Tristan” the pianist explores nocturnal themes of love and death, fear, ecstasy, loneliness & redemption in the music of Richard Wagner, Franz Liszt, Gustav Mahler & Hans Werner Henze.Includes his first concerto recording with the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig under Franz Welser-Möst.The five works that feature on Igor Levit’s latest double album span a period of 135 ye...

  • Love and death are the twin flames of Igor Levit's new double album: Tristan / The Guardian
    Posted At: September 27, 2022
    On Igor Levit’s album “Tristan” the pianist explores nocturnal themes of love and death, fear, ecstasy, loneliness & redemption in the music of Richard Wagner, Franz Liszt, Gustav Mahler & Hans Werner Henze. Includes his first concerto recording with the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig under Franz Welser-Möst.The five works that feature on Igor Levit’s latest double album span a period of 135 years that...

  • Titanic talent Igor Levit shows his lighter side at Wigmore Hall / theartsdesk
    Posted At: September 26, 2022
    Dazzling range in mastery of tone and techniquetheartsdesk's Rachel Halliburton writes……It probably tells you all you need to know about Igor Levit that when a mobile phone pinged just before his encore, he neither ignored it, nor seemed annoyed, but turned it into a seamless musical gag. After sending a ripple of laughter through the audience as his eyes widened in comedic shock, he played a responding pin...

  • Igor Levit - On DSCH: Works by Shostakovich and R Stevenson is 2022 BBC Music Magazine nominee
    Posted At: January 20, 2022
    BBC Music Magazine - Freya Parr writes…..In the year of BBC Music Magazine’s 30th anniversary celebrations, the nominees for the 2022 BBC Music Magazine Awards have been announced. Despite the challenges of the last year for the classical music industry, artists and labels have delivered top-class recordings.Musicians and sound engineers have become more accustomed to the limitations of social distancing an...

  • Cheers, whistles and bravos erupt as Igor Levit connects with his Carnegie Hall audience / The Wall Street Journal
    Posted At: January 14, 2022
    The Wall Street Journal's Barbara Jepson writes….Although the Russian-German pianist Igor Levit has won high praise for recordings of Bach and Beethoven, his eclectic tastes stretch far beyond the classical music canon. During the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic, Mr. Levit livestreamed, over Twitter, more than 50 concerts from his Berlin apartment, playing everything from Brahms, Mendelssohn and Shost...

  • After streaming dozens of concerts from his apartment, Igor Levit makes Carnegie Hall his home / The New York Times
    Posted At: January 14, 2022
    The New York Times - Zachary Woolfe writes……When the pianist Igor Levit streamed dozens of performances from his apartment in Berlin during the first pandemic lockdown in 2020, he wore neat but casual clothes: closefitting sweaters, hoodies over T-shirts. He was inviting you to a concert, yes, but also into his home; he offered, in milieu and music, both elevation and comfort.Carnegie Hall, Levit made clear...

  • Igor Levit set to premiere new Fred Hersch composition at Carnegie Hall / JAZZIZ: The Week in Jazz
    Posted At: January 4, 2022
    JAZZIZ: MATT MICUCCI writes…The Week in Jazz is your roundup of new and noteworthy stories from the jazz world. It’s a one-stop destination for the music news you need to know.A new Fred Hersch piece, “Variations on a Folk Song,” will receive its world premiere in a performance by pianist Igor Levit on January 13 at New York’s Carnegie Hall. The composition will be part of a program of solo interpretations ...

  • Igor Levit - ON DSCH makes Sequenza21/ 'Best of 2021 Piano Music'
    Posted At: December 16, 2021
    Sequenza21/ Christian Carey writes…..The 24 Preludes and Fugues, Op. 87, by Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) are some of the most imposing piano works of the twentieth century. Igor Levit has distinguished himself on record both in watershed works by Bach and Beethoven and, on 2020’s Encounter, a mixed program of romantic music and Palais de Mari by Morton Feldman.This 3-CD set includes Op. 87 plus the garga...

  • Igor Levit says; 'Fur Elise' is one of the most beautiful pieces I know' / The New York Times
    Posted At: January 7, 2021

    The New York Times - Joshua Barone writes......Beethoven's ‘Für Elise' Doesn't Deserve Your Eye Rolls. It is overplayed all over pop culture. But the pianist Igor Levit says it is "one of the most beautiful pieces I know." A bagatelle the length of a pop song, Beethoven's trifle is recognizable from the start: a wobble between E and D sharp that gives way to a tune you've heard virtually e...

  • Igor Levit is Sequenza21 - 2020 Artist of the Year
    Posted At: December 31, 2020

    Sequenza21's Christian Carey writes......I was fortunate last year to hear pianist Igor Levit's US debut, where he played a Beethoven concerto with an ebullient demeanor that was truly stirring. He has remained a touchstone artist for me throughout the pandemic. Levit has been generous in sharing mini-recitals via his Twitter account, with a range of repertoire that is astounding, from ragtime to Rze...

  • When his need for an audience was dashed by pandemic restrictions, Igor Levit went social / 60 Minutes
    Posted At: December 29, 2020

    The pandemic not only took his audiences away, its restrictions against gatherings also made millions of people lonely. So German pianist Igor Levit found a way to overcome the pandemic's effects on him and ease people's loneliness at the same time by streaming his world-renowned music on Twitter. The Grammy hopeful spoke to Jon Wertheim for a 60 Minutes profile to be broadcast Sunday, January 3 ...

  • Igor Levit's impeccable technique and burnished, well-defined sonority perfectly befit Busoni's aesthetic / ClassicsToday
    Posted At: December 14, 2020

    Ferruccio Busoni's transcriptions of Bach and Brahms Chorale Preludes aspire to recreate the original organ textures in thoroughly pianistic terms, requiring the performer to render smooth sleight-of-hand shifts between registers, and the already well-occupied left hand to cover pedal passages that organists play with their feet. Igor Levit's recordings of the complete Busoni Bach and Brahms Chorale Prel...

  • Igor Levit releases double album marked by a desire for encounter and togetherness / WFMT: Featured New Release
    Posted At: September 15, 2020

    Pianist Igor Levit has released a very personal double album marked by a desire for encounter and togetherness. The program includes rarely played arrangements of Bach and Brahms by Ferruccio Busoni and Max Reger, as well as Palais de Mari – Morton Feldman's final work for piano. "Encounter" is the pianist's sixth disc released on the Sony Classical label and conveys the urgent desire for human tog...

  • Igor Levit on surviving a Satie marathon / The New York Times Q&A
    Posted At: May 31, 2020

    The pianist Igor Levit is always one-upping himself. His recordings have swollen from a collection of four Beethoven sonatas to the entire cycle; his performances, from a traditional recital to, as of Sunday, a livestream lasting over 15 hours. In an extraordinary act of musical self-flagellation, Mr. Levit played Erik Satie's "Vexations" - a mysterious and absurd work consisting only of four lines r...

  • As COVID-19 shuts down the arts, the performers, and the teachers, I CARE IF YOU LISTEN presents 'a quick start guide to live streaming'
    Posted At: March 21, 2020

    We are about a week into the COVID-19 shut downs that have affected almost every arts organization, performing artist, teacher, professor, food industry worker, and beyond. No matter what we do, this will have a giant impact on the economy. For artists, losing performance fees and teaching wages are the hardest blows. Luckily the internet is an incredible resource in times of social isolation. Whether yo...

  • Gilmore Festival helps people find virtual concerts / 89.9WMUK
    Posted At: March 18, 2020

    Renowned pianist Igor Levit, in a hoodie and sock feet, played music by Franz Schubert in his Berlin living room this afternoon. Anyone who wanted could follow along on Twitter (where you can still watch the performance, and catch the next one). Kalamazoo's Gilmore Keyboard Festival, which had to cancel all of its spring 2020 concerts, helped people find the feed. The Festival is doing its best t...

  • The global prisoners' chorus / The Guardian
    Posted At: March 18, 2020

    As the Covid-19 virus has taken hold, human beings have turned to singing and music. We are expressing an eternal need for harmony. Neighbours play instruments from balconies as Italy stays under coronavirus lockdown – video Music, said Saint Thomas Aquinas, can be defined as "the exaltation of the mind derived from things eternal bursting forth in sound". Faced with the stresses and difficulti...

  • Musicians get creative amidst corona boredom / Deutsche Welle
    Posted At: March 17, 2020

    People are asked to stay at home and avoid social contacts to stop the spread of the unusual coronavirus. Meanwhile, musicians are getting creative. The coronavirus pandemic is very serious, but it's part of human nature to deal with even the worse situations with humor and creativity. The viral videos of Italy's "balcony singers" demonstrate this well. Now that even the most intimate concerts ha...

  • Musicians give free online concerts to beat coronavirus / Reuters
    Posted At: March 14, 2020

    Bans on mass gatherings introduced to slow the spread of the coronavirus pandemic might have been expected to deal a death blow to musical life, but have instead prompted a boom in free online concerts. One musician to step up to the plate is Russian-German pianist Igor Levit, who took to Twitter on Thursday evening to stream an impromptu rendition of Beethoven's Waldstein Sonata Op. 53 from his Berlin f...

  • How modern Igor Levit makes Beethoven's piano sonatas sound / theartsdesk picks
    Posted At: February 24, 2020

    Welcome to theartsdesk - Classical CDs Weekly: Beethoven, Bruckner, Notice Recordings. Definitive box sets of sonatas and symphonies, plus striking new music from a US independent label by Graham Rickson for Saturday, 22 February 2020. "Beethoven paid no attention at all to the conventions of his own time In fact, he only ever wrote music for the future." One strength of Igor Levit's magnificent ...

  • Igor Levit@Barbican brings thought, colour and feeling to every phrase of Shostakovich 24 Preludes and Fugues / theartsdesk
    Posted At: January 27, 2020

    "Citizen. European. Pianist," declares Russian-born, Berlin-based Igor Levit on the front page of his website. One should add, since he wouldn't, Mensch and master of giants. High-level human integrity seems a given when great pianists essay epics: certainly true of Elisabeth Leonskaja and Imogen Cooper tackling respective sonata trilogies by Beethoven and Schubert, or András Schiff in Bach...

  • Igor Levit draws a throaty collective bark of appreciation from Wigmore Hall audience / theartsdesk
    Posted At: May 23, 2019

    You seldom hear a Champions League-level roar of approval at the Wigmore Hall. Last night, though, Igor Levit drew a throaty collective bark of appreciation from the audience after (for once) an awed hush had followed the final dying cadences of the aria's return in Bach's Goldberg Variations. Had he earned it? Absolutely. This recital was first of three devoted to the idea of Variations. Friday will see...

  • Igor Levit will perform Stevenson's Passacaglia at Wigmore Hall
    Posted At: April 5, 2019

    Himself an exceptional pianist, the highly original and politically committed Scottish composer Ronald Stevenson died in 2015 at the age of 87. Written between 1960 and 1963 and characteristically ambitious, his vast Passacaglia, based on Shostakovich's musicalisation of his name in the form DSCH, is perhaps the largest single span of piano music ever composed. On Monday 27 May, pianist Igor Levit w...

  • Igor Levit not content to be heard only through piano / AP
    Posted At: March 15, 2019

    Igor Levit arrived at John F. Kennedy International Airport's Terminal 1 ahead of his first concert at Carnegie Hall's main Stern Auditorium. It was the last day of February and his entry didn't go smoothly. "It was actually four hours," he recalled. "There were 900 people standing in the line - approximately 900 people - it was packed to the stairs, to the escalator, and they literally had one window op...

  • Igor Levit 'Life' is beautifully played, beautifully felt, beautifully conveyed / STAGEADNCINEMA
    Posted At: January 12, 2019

    Along with Daniil Trifonov, pianist Igor Levit's concerts and CDs must recall what it first felt like to encounter Gilels and Richter, two other super-talented Russian pianists who brought excitement to classical music. When I saw Igor Levit live, one of the most striking aspects for this sensitive and strong pianist was the fascinating combination of music choices. So it wasn't surprising that the piece...

  • Igor Levit's 'Life' is one of the most outstanding piano recitals ever / MusicWeb International - Recording Of the Month
    Posted At: December 18, 2018

    This album is a tribute to Igor Levit's close friend, Hannes Malte Mahler, who died in a bike accident in 2016. The recital is a meditation on life and death and the protean nature of art. Many of the works are transcriptions. The towering shadows of Busoni and Liszt loom large. The secular and the sacred meld together in an uneasy cocktail, and the recital offers no easy answers to questions about grief...

  • Igor Levit's approach is unique at St. Paul's Schubert Club / Interlude
    Posted At: December 8, 2018

    Igor Levit the fascinating German-Russian pianist was featured on the Schubert Club's International Artists Series here in Saint Paul, Minnesota recently. The highly anticipated program had us on tenterhooks as the lone piano stood on the empty stage. Then out he walked in a long, flowing, white shirt, one arm leading his lanky body, and with barely a bow he sat at the instrument and began. He immedi...

  • Igor Levit - Life is the WFMT 'Featured New Release'
    Posted At: December 5, 2018

    In January 2018, pianist Igor Levit was named the recipient of the prestigious Gilmore Artist Award, which is given every four years. The jury said, "Levit is not only a superb pianist but also a deeply thoughtful and insightful artist." His latest release on Sony Classical is a very personal selection of works born out of profound loss. Sparked by the tragic death of a close friend in an accident, "Life...
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