Classical concerts featuring

Igor Levit

Mozart Week Salzburg

Pianist Series: Igor Levit

The Concertgebouw’s famous Main Hall is one of the best concert halls in the world, well-known for its exceptional acoustics and special atmosphere. In the Main Hall, you will feel history. Here, Gustav Mahler conducted his own compositions, as did Richard Strauss and Igor Stravinsky. Sergei Rachmaninoff played his own piano concertos in the Main Hall. This is also where musicians such as Leonard Bernstein, Vladimir Horowitz and Yehudi Menuhin gave legendary performances. Right up to now, the Main Hall offers a stage to the world’s best orchestras and musicians. Buy your tickets now and experience the magic of the Main Hall for yourself!

Igor Levit

Every pianist and soloist takes a risk with Franz Liszt's transcription of Beethoven's Symphony No. 7. Few have dared to tackle this pianistic chunk, which demands everything at once: power, virtuosity, a sense of the piece's architecture, and a keen ear for detail. Igor Levit takes on this task. Liszt has long been a favorite in his repertoire. For a TV documentary, he already traced the composer's footsteps around 15 years ago. Levit's program for the Essen Philharmonic is brilliant: First, he takes us back to the starting point of all romantic piano virtuosity, Bach's "Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue".

Igor Levit

In the 19th century, piano arrangements played a crucial role in disseminating symphonic works, with Franz Liszt's arrangements of Ludwig van Beethoven's symphonies considered the pinnacle. Igor Levit takes on this challenge. He performs Liszt's piano version, a feat that demands everything from a pianist. Levit also presents music by Johann Sebastian Bach and late piano pieces by Johannes Brahms.

Igor Levit / Piano Recital

When listening to Igor Levit play Beethoven, you feel that you are being taken by the hand, that you are being led in a determined and yet extremely friendly manner on an exploration of a densely built-up terrain. An unexpected attraction captivates at every bend in the road, everything is there in its intimacy, grandeur, in its deep, ethical seriousness. And yet it seems close, accessible, completely present. This also applies when Levit takes on a work that was not actually intended for piano, such as Beethoven’s expansive »Eroica« Symphony: Beethoven is as direct, spontaneous and physical as life itself. But also as existential and uncomfortable as the things that determine our happiness and our worries. Igor Levit achieves that magical balance between the telling details and the meaningfulness of the big picture that characterises the classic Beethoven.

Igor Levit / Piano Recital

He has become something of a travel guide through the often rocky and impassable terrain of Beethoven’s music. With his recording of all 32 Beethoven sonatas and the accompanying podcast, Igor Levit has developed into one of the best Beethoven interpreters and mediators of our time. It is absolutely logical that he is now venturing out of the carefully scrutinised cosmos of works originally written for piano and into more unexplored territory: Beethoven’s symphonies in the versions by piano virtuoso Franz Liszt – which were actually considered unplayable – are the common thread running through Levit’s current season. And who could be better suited to scaling these symphonic mountains than the exceptional pianist? After Brahms’ four ballads , his fingers should definitely be warm...

Guest performance

Igor Levit

Igor Levit

Igor Levit is one of the most significant pianists of his generation (born in 1987) and regularly performs on all the major stages worldwide. He has appeared at Konserthuset Stockholm on several occasions, including during the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth, when he performed all of Beethoven's piano sonatas in a series of live-streamed concerts (due to the pandemic).Beethoven is also featured on the program for this concert: the third symphony – Eroica – in Franz Liszt's famous arrangement. The program as a whole consists of what is often referred to as the three great Bs of classical music history: Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, and begins with Bach's chromatic fantasy and fugue. It was acclaimed and regarded as a masterpiece even during Bach's lifetime, filled with advanced voice leading and lightning-fast runs.Between Bach and Beethoven, Levit has placed Brahms' atmospheric and youthfully explosive ballades; he was only 21 years old when he wrote them. They are designed as short musical narratives. We know that the first one is based on an old Scottish ballad about Edward, who returns home with blood on his sword. The atmosphere is dark and ominous. However, no source material for the other three has been preserved.

Renaud Capuçon / Igor Levit

A long-awaited collaboration between celebrated French violinist Renaud Capuçon and the always-ambitious piano virtuoso Igor Levit. Together, they tackle Brahms’ three Sonatas for Violin and Piano—a concentration of poetry, brilliance and heroism.

Wiener Philharmoniker / Igor Levit / Thomas Adès

The classical prelude is a symphony by Joseph Haydn, followed by Thomas Adès’ piano concerto, which has already been performed around 60 times since its premiere in 2019 – a remarkable amount for a contemporary work. Given the fame that the multi-talented British composer enjoys, this success is hardly surprising. A New York Times critic wrote about the premiere of the concerto: »As ever, the craft is astounding, the orchestration ceaselessly brilliant. The voice is wholly his own — dissonant, offbeat, whiplash, wry — even as it whispers to musics past. This breathless concerto comes across as zesty and accessible. But don’t be fooled. Just below the surface, the music sizzles. I can’t wait to hear it again.« The classical prelude is a symphony by Joseph Haydn, followed by Thomas Adès’ piano concerto, which has already been performed around 60 times since its premiere in 2019 – a remarkable amount for a contemporary work. Given the fame that the multi-talented British composer enjoys, this success is hardly surprising. A New York Times critic wrote about the premiere of the concerto: »As ever, the craft is astounding, the orchestration ceaselessly brilliant. The voice is wholly his own — dissonant, offbeat, whiplash, wry — even as it whispers to musics past. This breathless concerto comes across as zesty and accessible. But don’t be fooled. Just below the surface, the music sizzles. I can’t wait to hear it again.« Adès, whose music is full of musical echoes from baroque to jazz yet refuses to follow any dogmas, sets the tone for the second half of the concert featuring Leoš Janácek, whose musical language around a century ago was equally undogmatic. His rhapsody »Taras Bulba« sets Nikolai Gogol’s tragic tale of the same name about a father and his two sons to music. So vividly that a film inevitably unfolds in the mind’s eye of the listener. By way of a prelude, two miniatures pay tribute to Pierre Boulez as the spotlighted composer of the International Music Festival.

7th Soirée

Concert in Budapest

Esa-Pekka Salonen & Igor Levit

Esa-Pekka Salonen & Igor Levit

Esa-Pekka Salonen & Igor Levit

Konzerthausorchester Berlin, Joana Mallwitz

The chicken that seems to cluck through the first movement of Haydn's Paris Symphony No. 83 in the second theme was not sighted there by the composer himself but, as is so often the case, by posterity. But with Haydn's numerous symphonies, epithets are certainly helpful. With ‘La Poule’ from 1785, Joana Mallwitz continues her Haydn focus at the Konzerthausorchester, which spans several seasons. This is followed by a leap into the 20th century: Béla Bartók's Third Piano Concerto, interpreted by Igor Levit, touchingly demonstrates that shortly before his death in exile in the US in 1945, the seriously ill composer managed to free himself from the gloom of his final years and write a cheerful, luminous work for his wife, the pianist Ditta Pásztory. He was only unable to orchestrate the last 17 bars himself. The suite from Stravinsky's ballet ‘Petrushka’, which takes place at an early 19th century Russian fair among Punch and Judy puppets, forms the furious conclusion to the evening.