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The arrival of Igor Levit added a new personality to the top echelon of pianists. Here was a musician motivated by setting himself the most challenging intellectual goals and taking his audiences with him.
His latest two-disc set ranges widely over the centuries, but the idea behind it is characteristically erudite, exploring the nature of the fantasia, its blend of freedom and rigour.
Levit says the starting point was Ferruccio Busoni’s Fantasia contrappuntistica, inspired by the unfinished nature of Bach’s Art of Fugue. It was, he says, “the final destination of the journey that I have been undertaking in terms of my repertory in recent years”, and the ambition of Busoni’s concept, its length and complex blend of fugue and fantasy, explain why. Levit gives a far-ranging performance of the work, imaginative in tone colours and grandly envisioned in its ascent to the summit.
Three other major works — Bach’s Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue in D Minor, BWV 903 and Liszt’s mighty Piano Sonata in B Minor and Alban Berg’s Piano Sonata, Op 1 — provide the staging posts. The Liszt gets a rather dry performance, but Levit is admirably clear-headed in the complex part-writing of the other two.
As sweeteners, he includes four shorter pieces by the same composers to top or tail each major work — a nice idea, especially Busoni’s Nuit de Noël, which acts as balm at the close of the recital, like a well-earned encore.
★★★★☆
‘Fantasia’ is released by Sony Classical