Igor Levit
- Classical pianist
- Professor
Biography[edit]
Born in Gorky (now Nizhny Novgorod) to a Jewish family, Levit began playing piano at the age of three. He received piano lessons from his mother Elena Levit, a piano teacher, répétiteur and grand-disciple of Heinrich Neuhaus.[3] As a child, he had his first successes on the concert stage in his hometown. His family moved to Hannover in 1995. From 1999 to 2000, he studied at the Mozarteum in Salzburg with Hans Leygraf and, from 2000 to 2010, at the Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien Hannover with Karl-Heinz Kämmerling, Matti Raekallio and Bernd Goetzke.[4]
Levit has appeared in major concert halls and music festivals around the world. During his studies, he won prizes in several international competitions including second prize at the International Maria Callas Grand Prix in Athens (2004), first prize at the 9th Hamamatsu International Piano Academy Competition in Hamamatsu (2004),[5] the second prize at the piano competition Kissinger Klavierolymp (2004),[6] the silver medal and three other awards at the Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition in Tel Aviv (2005). In October 2011, he appeared in a 45-minute documentary aired on 3sat about his love for the music of Franz Liszt. He was a BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist from 2011 to 2013.
Levit was appointed to a professorship at the Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien Hannover (Hannover University of Music, Drama and Media) starting in the winter semester 2019/2020.[7] In 2021, Levit contributed a cover of the Metallica song "Nothing Else Matters" to the charity tribute album The Metallica Blacklist.[8]
During the Coronavirus pandemic of 2020, Levit began streaming concerts from his home in Berlin Mitte.[2] He posted these to Twitter as a series of Hauskonzerte:[2][17]
Separately from these concerts, on 30/31 May 2020 Levit gave a solo performance of Vexations by Erik Satie, from a studio in Berlin, over a period of over 15 hours.[76]
In 2007, when he was 20 years old, Levit released his debut album, a set of Beethoven's piano concertos, with the Cologne Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Helmut Müller-Brühl on Naxos records.[77] In 2013, he released a two-disc set of Ludwig van Beethoven's late piano sonatas (Nos. 28 to 32), on Sony Classical Records.[78] His second Sony album, a recording of Johann Sebastian Bach's six keyboard partitas, was named Gramophone Magazine's recording of the month for October 2014.[79][80] His third Sony album, a 3-CD set of Bach's Goldberg Variations, Beethoven's Diabelli Variations, and The People United Will Never Be Defeated! by Frederic Rzewski, was released in October 2015.[81][82] His fourth album was a 2-CD set released in 2018 entitled Life, including works by Busoni, Bach, Schumann, Rzewski, Wagner, Liszt, and Bill Evans.[83] It was Levit's response to the death of his best friend, German artist Hannes Malte Mahler, who died in a bicycle accident in 2016.[84][85]
His recordings of the complete Beethoven Piano Sonatas were released by Sony Classical on 13 September 2019.[86] Levit was named Gramophone's 2020 Artist of the Year.[87] His recording On DSCH, pairing Shostakovich's 24 Preludes and Fugues Op.87 with Ronald Stevenson's epic Passacaglia on DSCH, was issued by Sony in 2021.[88][89]
