Igor Levit

Igor Levit

Where to begin with my latest lockdown journey into the mind? If I’m not careful, I’m going to start displaying Stockholm Syndrome, to the extent that I’m beginning to give the lockdown the credit for all that I’m discovering, when I might give it to YouTube, to myself, or to those most worthy of the credit, the artists themselves. In any case, my latest discovery...

The most recent (May 18) issue of The New Yorker has what is part profile article, part music review, of the German pianist Igor Levit by Alex Ross, and I recommend it highly. If you don’t have a subscription, it’s available online here.

One obvious place to start, if you're not familiar with him, is to go straight to a demonstration of what he is capable of. I'd suggest the Waldstein Sonata as he played it recently at the Schloss Bellevue, the residence of Germany's President. There is an English introduction following the German introduction.

Or you could just start with Levit himself. A good way to get a sense of the man is to listen to him talk about Beethoven and what he means to him.  Here he is giving another demonstration of what he can do with those stunningly beautiful fingers when he sits down at the keyboard: 

Over the past several days I’ve been listening alternatively to his music and to interviews he has given in a diverse variety of venues, with the directors of the Salzburg Festival, with fans, with other musicians and with philosophers. He is a terribly interesting man, a man of strong opinions which he expresses openly and directly and assertively. He describes himself as citizen first, a European second, a musician third. He lives by the motto "have no fear." When he talks of music, he resists any distinction between music and life - music is life, and when he talks of politics he insists that the world must engage, that we are living in a time of existential crises, of the possibility of destroying the planet, and of losing democracy to a new rush of national movements on a global scale.

I listen for a time to his music, then to his interviews, and love being able to go back and forth, discovering the man as an artist, a world-class talent and a brilliant mind. He is already widely known in the German-speaking world, and no doubt among those who follow concert pianists more closely than I do. I’m not going to waste time bewailing how long it has taken me to come across this inspiring artist, but simply celebrate the fact that I have a new one to add to my already large collection. 

I’ve written at different times about my fascination with one young prodigy from Russia, Alexander Malofeev, and another from Georgia, Sandro Nebieridze. I’ve had the pleasure of hearing several concerts by the wonderful interpreter of Chopin, Garrick Ohlsson, and if I were to pick an all-time favorite pianist, it would probably be the Argentine, Martha Argerich. These favorites are in my life not because of any systematic search for excellence, but because they have come across my path purely by chance, either because they gave concerts at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco or, more recently on YouTube. I’m aware that piano prodigies are actually not rare, and now, thanks to the internet they have become more accessible. All you have to do is take the time to check in.

So far, fortunately, though this might suggest one could get jaded, or at least come to take exceptional talent for granted, each new discovery only seems to add to my appreciation of the beauty to be found in the performances of these artists with talents I'm tempted to call superhuman. 

What draws me to Igor Levit in particular is the way he speaks with such excitement about his own musical journey, how he discovered the Italian composer, Ferruccio Busoni, for example - which then leads you to try to find what he found and before you know it you’ve spent another day wrapped up in brilliant talent and rich musicality and you wonder why you wasted so much time fussing over the wretchedness of the American political scene, for example, or wasted so much of your precious little time left on this planet watching the crap Netflix and Amazon put out these days. I don’t want to dismiss crap out of hand - there are times when escapist crap is just what the doctor ordered to keep you sane and balanced, but one needs to keep perspective.

I haven’t been bored since I first learned to read, so that’s not the issue. But I do live by the motto of my old friend Gretchen who responded to my question once, “Do you have any regrets?” “Over the things I’ve done, no,” she said. “Every experience I’ve had has made me what I am today and I like what I am today.” Then she added, “But I do think I’ve done some things too long.”

That’s where I am. I want to stop doing things any longer than make no sense. I now put my fork down when I’m full. I never stuff myself at the table anymore and so I don’t have to worry about losing weight. And I never hesitate to turn off a bad movie mid-way. I no longer feel obliged to keep going just to see what will happen. And I now have a rich repertoire of good music I can keep coming back to and the knowledge that there’s always another artist out there who I’m going to find a childlike enthusiasm for, as I have this week with Igor Levit.

Just to give you an example of how one can spin off from one good piece of music to another, I followed up Levit’s excitement about the American composer Frederic Rzewski, who was born two years before me and less than thirty miles away. Rzweski wrote a piece that grabbed Levit’s attention when he, Levit, was just sixteen. He has credited the piece with keeping him going in pursuit of a life as a musician. It took him years to master it - it is wildly creative and unconventional, or what Levit would call liberating in the way Beethoven was for his time. 

The piece is an adaptation of the march written for the Chilean movement behind Salvador Allende by the composer Sergio Ortega. It’s called “El Pueblo Unido Jamás Será Vencido (The people united will never be defeated).” It speaks loudly to me, not only because I find the music incredibly rousing, but because, as I’ve explained elsewhere, the CIA overthrow of Allende is one of the reasons I think I’ve probably lost forever the ability to be proud to be American. 

That move often gets overshadowed by the Vietnam War and the War in Iraq, and now by the surrender of Americans to their worst white supremacist instincts in following Donald Trump.  The phrase has been picked up around the world and it takes me back to one of the darkest moments of my life, the killing of Harvey Milk. The crowd I was in in front of San Francisco City Hall picked up the "people united" chant when his killer, Dan White, was let off with a slap on the wrist.

But don’t be distracted by my political views, if you don’t agree with them. Have a listen to Levit playing this piece and see if you don’t agree with me that it is super powerful. I’ll give you just a short version of it here: But you can find the full-length version played by Levit and by Rzewski himself with a quick YouTube search.

And if this leads you to a discovery or rediscovery of the appeal of Beethoven, as it appears to be doing for me, so much the better.

I refuse to give credit to the U.S. Army for turning my life around by offering me all manner of insights and a life of intimate friendships. And I refuse to credit the lockdown with the discovery of what's out there in the world of music. I see them not as the source of the most meaningful parts of my life, but as merely the venue.

And as with my very difficult three years wearing a military uniform and that challenging year I spent in Saudi Arabia, I'm counting on what I learned from those past experiences to hold true now, that all hard times come eventually to an end. I trust that this lockdown, as well as this nightmare in the White House, will one day fade away.

But the richness of the encounter with beauty that comes out of the hard times, well, I've got to believe that will be with me forever.

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