Igor Levit: Life review - pianist`s transcendental meditation on grief
(The Guardian Culture News)

Sony, 2 CDsIt is heartening that pianist Igor Levit should have chosen to call his new double album Life, given that it emerged out of the heavy fug of grief. Levit´s close friend Hannes Malte Mahler, an artist, was killed on his bike in 2016. This album is not only a monument to him but a contemplation - of the continuation of life, of how music is handed down from one generation to another, and of eternity itself.What it doesn´t do is expect answers. Levit´s choices touch upon the spiritual, but the music is always mixed with the secular: the solemn ritual of the Good Friday Music from Wagner´s Parsifal, reimagined for piano by Liszt and rendered transcendental by Levit´s calm, spacious playing; Bach´s church melodies wrangled by the composer Busoni into a sorrowful Fantasia, a memorial to his father. Continue reading...