The audience gathers in the Herbert-von-Karajanplatz
The Grosses Festspielhaus before the concert: a photo of an empty concert hall is like an audio recording of a painter's brushes in their jar!
Igor Levit, despite his youth, is a distinguished artist with many honors including 2020 Gramophone Artist of the Year. In 2022 his Shostakovich album ON DSCH was BBC Music Magazines Recording of the year. I saw him here three years ago in the smaller Haus für Mozart, but last night he was in the big hall, the Grosses Festspielhaus and it was oversold! They had approximately seventy extra chairs placed on the wings of the stage and I didn't see an empty seat in the house.
The program consisted of the Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue in D minor, BWV 903 by Bach, the Six Piano Pieces op 118 by Brahms and, in the second half, Liszt's piano arrangement of the Symphony No. 7 by Beethoven. This last was the show-stopper, a stunningly virtuosic achievement by both Liszt and Levit. It was so strange to hear this very familiar symphony transformed on the piano, as Liszt himself suggested, like an engraving of a painting with all the light and shade but missing the orchestral color. There was one encore, the Nocturne in C# minor by Chopin.
I saw Igor Levit three years ago and he was very fine then, though I didn't quite find his Mahler Symphony no. 10 transcription entirely convincing. But tonight was a success on many levels and the audience gave a standing ovation. In fact, some stifled clapping broke out after the haunting Allegretto movement of the Beethoven. Clapping between movements is unheard of in Salzburg--normally, but Igor Levit has won a following here.
One of the things I have admired about Igor Levit is how he launched his recording career: with four double CD sets. The five late piano sonatas by Beethoven, followed by the six partitas of Bach, followed by a collection of three variations: the Goldbergs of Bach, the Diabelli of Beethoven and the big set by Rzewski (actually, that's three CDs) and then the Preludes and Fugues in all the keys by Shostakovich. Whew, after that, a lot of pianists would just retire. This is what you record at the end of your career, not the beginning.
Anyway, here is the Piano Sonata No. 30 in E major by Beethoven in a live performance by Igor Levit from Wigmore Hall:
Would it be inappropriate to note that Beethoven re-invented the design of the piano sonata with every one he composed? This one is in three movements:
Vivace ma non troppo (compressed first movement in under four minutes--he establishes the tonic, states the first theme and modulates to the dominant, all in the first seven seconds or so)
Prestissimo (one of Beethoven's brilliant scherzos)
Gesangvoll, mit innigster Empfindung (Andante molto cantabile ed espressivo) --six transcendent variations which take up two thirds of the length of the sonata
Looking over my shelves, I have two previous recordings of the 24 Preludes and Fugues, op. 87 by Dmitri Shostakovich. These were written after Shostakovich was sent to Leipzig in 1950 to serve on the jury of a competition connected with the celebrations of the 200th anniversary of the death of J. S. Bach. First prize was won by Tatyana Nikolayeva who was prepared to play any of the Bach Well-Tempered Clavier preludes and fugues on request. Shostakovich was quite impressed. Between October of that year and February of 1951 he composed a set of preludes and fugues in all the keys. My reference for this is Laurel Fay, Shostakovich: A Life, pp. 177 et seq.
Sometimes I think of myself as a "critical traditionalist" or someone who appreciates the enormous contribution the resonance of tradition makes to cultural activities like music. The "critical" part comes in recognizing the possible defects in tradition and the possible benefits deriving from genuinely new creative efforts. So I find the way that Shostakovich approaches harmony and counterpoint under the influence of Bach absolutely fascinating.
The oldest recording I have of these pieces is Vladimir Ashkenazy on Decca dating from 1999. There are much earlier clips by Tatyana Nikolayeva and Shostakovich himself of selected individual pieces on YouTube, of course. I have to say that Ashkenazy does not really knock me out. I also have his complete Chopin and my impression of both recordings is that he is a fine technician, but rather a humdrum interpreter. No poetry.
The other recording that I picked up later is by Konstantin Scherbakov on Naxos. It was recorded in 1999 as well. Technically it is both clear and brilliant but it shows a lot of poetic grace as well. Very nice recording.
Igor Levit's recording history is very impressive. His debut two-disc set (he only seems to release recordings in double sets) was of the Beethoven late sonatas, something most pianists reserve for their later years. He followed this with the six Partitas of Bach (another double set) and then a monster set of variations: the Goldbergs by Bach, the Diabelli by Beethoven and The People United Will Never Be Defeated by Rzewski. What next, you might ask? There were a couple of CD releases that I missed somehow and then this: On DSCH, the Shostakovich 24 Preludes and Fugues with a third disc devoted to an homage written by the Scottish composer Ronald Stevenson in 1960-61 on Shostakovich's musical motto: DSCH. In notes:
The D is Dmitri, of course. In German E flat is called "es." The C is C and, also in German, B natural is referred to as "h." So DSCH spells Dmitri Shostakovich or as close as you can get in musical notes. Sadly there seems to be no good way of transliterating Bryan into notes! Bach however had the very obvious motif which is remarkably similar to DSCH:
The Stevenson piece is titled Passacaglia on DSCH and it is such a mammoth work, nearly an hour and a half long, that I will likely do a separate post on it. Suffice it to say that finding that piece and placing it next to the Shostakovich is the kind of creative programming we expect from Levit.
Now to the Shostakovich. These preludes and fugues demonstrate an astonishing range of creative invention from the calm sarabande of the first prelude in C major, to the Mussorgskian rumblings of the G major prelude, to the cheerful D major fugue, to the French overture style of the B minor prelude, to the A major fugue that sounds like Ravel, to the Hungarian dance-like F# minor prelude, to the very Bachian subject of the E major fugue. And then there are all the pieces that really only sound like Shostakovich: driving fugues, deeply resonant preludes and his trademark grotesquerie.
Now let's look at some examples. Here is the opening of the first prelude in C major:
Click to enlarge
Characteristic sarabande rhythm but the Shostakovich twist is the sudden switch to the tonic minor with a secondary dominant. What is unusual about Shostakovich's harmony is not that it does unprecedented things, but his practice is unexpected, takes unusual turns and is angular rather than smooth. He is always surprising you, which, actually, is only possible in a context where you have conventional harmonic expectations. In the C major fugue, he surprises by not having a single accidental in the entire piece! The entries wander about modally, but without leaving the diatonic scale. The rising fifth interval of the opening of the subject at one point becomes a tritone when it enters on B to F. The scintillating arpeggios of the A minor prelude immediately recall the Bach C major prelude from Bk I of the WTC:
But Shostakovich skews unexpectedly to F# major halfway through which Bach would have done quite differently. Shostakovich preserves some of the basic conventions of the Baroque fugue style: he always answers the subject on the fifth as in the A minor fugue:
Later on he has entries on C and G and a stretto on F# minor followed by one on B flat minor. Nearly every fugue uses stretto to some extent. The prelude in E minor uses Corelli 2nds to expressive effect:
I could go on and on, but this post is already a bit of a monster. But I have to mention a couple of the later pieces. The fugue in D flat major is in Shostakovich's semi-psychotic grotesque manner, starting with the subject:
This is followed by perhaps the most hauntingly expressive fugue of all, in B flat minor:
You need a whole page of that to get the idea. What a marvelous and complex subject. And when these richly riotous ornaments are piled up on top of one another all I can think is that it is as if Messiaen and Bach met up high in the alps and wrote a piece together.
Speaking of Messiaen, his piano music, especially the Catalogue d'oiseaux, is one of the great masterworks of 20th century piano music even though its great length and difficulty make it rarely heard. I think I would put these 24 Preludes and Fugues by Shostakovich on a similar plane. In a century rich with great piano music by Ravel, Debussy, Prokofiev, and Messiaen, I think that this music by Shostakovich, who did not write a great deal of piano music, deserves a place.
And here I am, at the end of this post, and I have not done a trace of what I promised: review Levit's recording of the piece! Well, it is very fine: accurate, expressive and brilliantly executed.
Here is a recording of Shostakovich playing the Prelude and Fugue in B flat minor. The fugue begins around the 3 minute mark.
Here is the sixth concert in Igor Levit's Beethoven sonata cycle from this year's Salzburg Festival. This one includes a couple of the most popular sonatas, the Pastoral and the Moonlight. Rather lovely playing. The thing about the Beethoven piano sonatas is that they, along with the Bach chorales, are probably the best course in composition there is.
I've only been aware of the existence of Igor Levit for a week now. I've been doing a lot of listening. He is, without a doubt, an enormous talent. I haven't heard his Bach Partitas yet--it's on order--but his Goldbergs are very, very fine. His Rzewski is fantastic and has convinced me that the piece itself, The People United Will Never Be Defeated, is a substantial work. (Though it always makes me think of the famous challenge uttered by Isidora Dolores Ibárruri Gómez during the Siege of Madrid during the Spanish Civil War: ¡No Pasarán! ("They shall not pass!") To which Gen. Francisco Franco famously replied, after having won the war, "Pasamos." ("We passed.")
But what is most evident is that Igor Levit's Beethoven is simply astonishing. Everyone plays Beethoven and, since he is that kind of composer, it usually sounds pretty good. But it is often too polite and well-mannered. This is not the Beethoven of Igor Levit. Sure, it is beautiful, slow and contemplative when necessary, but it is also rude and violent when necessary. Most of all, Levit makes us hear it differently. Sometimes, and I really don't know how he does this, it sounds almost atonal. I think it has something to do with how he balances the chords and places the phrases. With the exception of Grigory Sokolov, I don't think there is another pianist alive who plays Beethoven so well.
Here, to whet your appetite is just the theme to the Diabelli Variations:
Here is the second movement of op. 31 no. 2:
There is not a lot of Igor Levit on YouTube, but here is a little taste of his Bach:
I spent a good part of yesterday listening to a pianist I just discovered and reading some reviews going back a couple of years. The pianist is Igor Levit, born in Russia to Jewish parents (his mother headed the piano department at the conservatory) he grew up in Germany from an early age.
A while back I was trying to get a sense of the level of artistry of a couple of new pianists coming on the scene named Yuja Wang and Khatia Buniatishvili. They were both seeing a lot of publicity and interviews, but a lot of it focussed on their personal stories and image. Yuja Wang in particular got a lot of initial publicity for wearing very short skirts. So I went to YouTube to see what I could hear and got a lot of concertos and flashy repertoire. Yes, you can get a sense of the technique from that, but not much sense of the real artistry. Especially with the piano, which is a machine for producing a lot of notes quickly, you have to look for repertoire with more substance. So I searched around for some clips of Bach and Beethoven. Nothing. Nada. Hm, that's interesting. Of course, this year Yuja Wang has been touring with the Hammerklavier Sonata so that's something we can listen to. I compared hers and Grigory Sokolov's performances in this recent post.
But when it comes to Igor Levit, who is the same age as Yuja Wang, by the way, twenty-nine, there really is no difficulty trying to find him playing substantial repertoire: he plays nothing else! His debut album on Sony was two discs of the late Beethoven piano sonatas and already reviewers were saying "what can he do for an encore?" The answer was his second Sony album, also two discs, this time of all the Bach Partitas. His most recent, which just won the Gramophone Album of the Year for 2016, is three discs of the Bach Goldberg Variations, the Beethoven Diabelli Variations and the Rzewski The People United Will Never Be Defeated variations. Good lord! Now what will he do next?
I spent yesterday listening through this last album a couple of times. Honestly, I have not heard a musician with this level of intense and profound artistry since Grigory Sokolov. Levit is very different of course: he is a young man and often it is the sheer energy that impresses. These are not polite performances. The Diabelli Variations especially are played with such edgy intensity that they sound almost atonal in places. The Rzewski is manic to an extreme and in the next moment deliberate and restrained. The Bach is both lovely and haunting and even at times like riding in a Ferrari at full acceleration. There is no need to worry about the same old same old repertoire--Levit finds a great deal in these works to convey with new expression. Actually, that is precisely why these pieces (well, not the Rzewski yet) are so highly respected: they are bottomless wells of artistic truth.
In listening to Igor Levit you are listening to the pianist who really is the best of the younger generation (at least of the ones I have heard). And looking back at that fulsome tribute to Yuja Wang in the New Yorker just last week, you realize that they are talking about their local artist (she lives in Manhattan) who has made good and looks good while doing it. But Mr. Levit is in another ball park entirely. Here he is playing the Aria from the Goldbergs:
