Igor Levit’s performances of Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas at the Wigmore Hall have stretched from early last autumn to the start of the summer. Individually and cumulatively, they have provided one of the most compelling experiences of the current London concert season. This final recital, consisting of the last three sonatas, epitomised the several that I was able to attend – boldly conceived, sometimes questionable and even uncomfortable, but full of thought and technically outstanding.
Levit is not a Beethovenian purist. He does not play with head metaphorically bowed in reverence to the canon. His Beethoven loves to surprise, and this is surely a necessary instinct. He is at one with Beethoven’s boundary-testing radicalism, a feature that was especially evident in the sometimes reckless but gloriously exciting treatment of some of the early sonatas. In the last three, of course, the stylistic boundaries are tested to even further extremes, but Levit mostly kept his repertoire of shock tactics in check.
There were some exceptions. The legato opening of the E major sonata opus 109, for example, rippled subtly from the start. Yet Levit – and Beethoven – loves his contrasts, and the sudden shift to adagio espressivo was heavily underlined, as was the ferocity of the presto second movement. Dramatic shifts of tempo and dynamics are a very marked feature of Levit’s Beethoven. There is always a justification in the score, but Levit’s handling can be overstated.
Although Levit is strikingly unafraid to play loudly, the intellect nevertheless always seems in control of the fingers. The touch in the closing theme and variations, the heart of opus 109, was beautifully spacious and clean, and the control over this movement was impressive. The scruple and tact of the playing in the A flat sonata opus 110 was, if anything, even finer, the lovely opening movement finely balanced, and the adagio and fugue of the finale building compellingly to its ecstatic final bars.
Beethoven’s final sonata, the C minor opus 111, found the two Levits, like the two Beethovens, most fully reconciled. The maestoso opening movement was emphatically done, full of echoes of the young Beethoven, still storming the musical gates, with Levit’s playing at its most authentic. The arietta and variations then ascended into the heavens with the most delicate of sustained touches, amid its apotheosis of trills, with Levit fully absorbed in realising the diaphanous ending of the great pianistic journey.
