The seasonal shutdown means noteworthy concerts of any kind are rare events in the days between the pre-Christmas Messiahs and the first New Year waltzes. Happily, no one seems to have told the Russian-born, German-based pianist Igor Levit about this indolent British custom. As a result, just two nights after Christmas, Levit arrived at the Wigmore Hall to unwrap one of the most demanding and stimulating London piano recitals heard there throughout the whole of 2014.
Levit’s playing fuses two striking qualities that ought not sit as well together as they do. On the one hand he is a force-field of concentrated musical energy, whose hyperactive attention to detail was a feature of Beethoven’s will-of-the-wisp two-movement F major Sonata Op 54, with which he began. On the other, he possesses the ability to sustain a structure and a musical argument, which, allied to a lovely touch, held Bach’s C minor Second Partita together, even though some of the contrasts seemed unduly forced.
The same juxtaposition of qualities infused the two most striking items on the programme. To hear any pianist, especially a non-native, programming Ronald Stevenson’s Peter Grimes Fantasy is a rarity indeed, but the choice is admirably characteristic of Levit’s broad appetites. Though the interplay between Britten and Stevenson was not as obvious as sometimes, the bravura succinctness of Stevenson’s writing — including its two tricky but evocative Britten quotations for plucked piano strings — was very powerfully captured.
Not so rarely performed, but every bit as daunting and with more to spare, was Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata Op 106. Here, the contrasting qualities in Levit’s pianism were again striking. The opening movement crackled with percussive potency and, taken at speed as written, was irresistible. The little scherzo flickered with quirky lightness. The slow movement was a finely spun exploration of key changes and expressive harmonies. The fugue thundered. It sometimes felt as though different players were at work in each movement. But perhaps the truth is that Levit has got it all.
