Igor Levit Beethoven: As what is to come

As if it goes to the last piano Sonata: Igor Levit closes his Munich Beethoven cycle

Munich - Well plate, technically the man has the nose in front. Eight months, until the Beethoven-losplatzt year, but this September is the first CD Box set to mark the anniversary on the market, the complete recording of the sonatas. A Holy ambition is geraunt the cycle, from the "New Testament" of piano music. And even if you ignored the incense: one way or the other, this is one of the most important interpretive statements in the career of Igor Levit.

Beethoven's 32 series to the 250. Birthday of the master, this is undoubtedly a PR strategy. And at the same time, a logical line under Levits past activities. In the Prince Regent theater, the 32-Year-old has now completed his Live cycle of the sonatas. From the obligation date for connoisseurs to betrampelten cult Matinee has the thing changed.

The three last sonatas, in the end, that sounds logical. However, as Levit Beethoven's final words formulated to this Instrument, you can feel at the same time: As for ten, fifteen sonatas could be followed. Of course, one hears a lot of cash to be Expected, serenity, maturity, melancholy, a umflorte Sound, the Meditation on the unspoken, and perhaps the last things. But at the same time, it is clear that Beethoven finished nothing, but investigating possible in other, again and again-Holding and self-assurance seeking in the traditional structure: Levit plays such as the double recourse to the Baroque Fugue in the Finale of Opus 110 as breathing crate the end, miraculous moments.

A final as a transit station

A large question mark at the Levite so over the last three sonatas. Especially since he is external anyway hardly on – mostly Yes – power discharges. Less energy and vehemence, is he (so massive the head movement of Opus 111 also in the room are to be cut), but also color values or patterns and, much more often, to entmateriali zations, as in the Adagio of Opus 110.

If it may be a drawer, then it is Levit Igor, the of the questioning poet. You hear only primed the impressionistic, like spontaneously emerging Matrix, the passing in the first movement of Opus 109, and the Andante in the same factory, like a slow-motion Ballads. Or the fragility of the Arietta of Opus 111: Levite, the variations in the almost twenty-minute giant set of completely logical from a grown-up, the "Boogie Variation" as an effect, but so simple as it is obvious the collision of two rhythm authorizations – and, later, the resolution of architecture in the style elements, such as trills and sun shades.

the last of The sonatas to stay with Igor Levit, i.e., a transit station of Beethoven. Hunches, intimations, Experimental, all of this resonates with in each of the sets. And sometimes it sounds as if the composer's most beautiful arias and songs for voice, but for the piano came to mind.

A couple of hours later, the Levite talked about all that with the journalist Eleonore Büning in the Munich house of literature, at the launch of her book "let's Talk about Beethoven". What is also clear is: Even Igor Levits sonatas-Box and the just completed cycle are only a first Statement. Because what is to come.