Piano recital Igor Levit

Genius and cosmopolitan - "A piano is known to have 88 keys, to be precise. Pianists are a dime a dozen, but the likes of Igor Levit are rare," wrote the Münchner Merkur in early 2024. Neither can be denied. As interesting, interested and present in the media as Igor Levit is as a person and as a pianist, his programming is just as varied and well thought-out. For this reason, it was noted in passing that Levit practically never performed Frédéric Chopin on those 88 keys. But this has now changed - for example at the Salzburg Festival in the summer of 2024, where the audience enjoyed a rare Chopin encore. Or shortly afterwards at the Elbphilharmonie, where one of his top-class "Solidarity Concerts" once again showed how masterfully Igor Levit is able to connect people through music - and beyond music.

The international star will therefore open a new chapter when he makes a guest appearance at the Albert Concerts in 2025 with Chopin's Piano Sonata in B minor, his third and final contribution to the genre. After an early first and a rhapsodic second attempt, Chopin fused tradition with visionary free spirit in his third sonata in 1844. Preluded by Robert Schumann's mysterious Nachstücke op. 23, it allows us to hear the Chopin that Heinrich Heine described as a genius, not just a virtuoso but also a poet - a citizen of the world whose "true fatherland is the dreamland of poetry". Igor Levit opens the evening with Franz Schubert's unfathomable Sonata in B flat major D 960. Completed just a few weeks before Schubert's death in 1828, the sonata captures all the yearning of its era despite its major-key disposition.

Program:
Schubert, Piano Sonata No. 21 in B flat major D 960
Schumann, Nachtstücke op. 23
Chopin, Sonata No. 3 in B flat minor op. 58

Igor Levit, piano

EUR 92,- / 82,- / 68,- / 46,- / 34,- incl. fees

Igor Levit | Photo © Felix Broede