Fantasia Igor Levit

Igor Levit’s new double album Fantasia features a wide range of works spanning a period of almost two centuries from 1720 to 1910 and showcases key compositions by Franz Liszt, Ferruccio Busoni, Johann Sebastian Bach and Alban Berg. The starting point of the four paradigmatic works featured on the double album is the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Levit has chosen Bach’s exceptional Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue in D minor and combined it with Liszt’s B minor Sonata, a highly charged piece that at the time of its composition looked far ahead into the future (which Levit is currently performing to great acclaim all over the world), together with Busoni’s Fantasia contrappuntistica, in which Busoni perpetuated the Bach tradition, and Alban Berg’s only Piano Sonata.

Returning to the studio after a three-year pause, Igor Levit reflects on existence and loss—thoughts prompted by the death of a close friend. Tracing a journey from the music of Bach to that of Frederic Rzewski by way of Schumann, Wagner, Liszt, and others, he supports his intellectual and emotional concerns with playing of power and tenderness. Liszt’s “Ad nos” Fantasia and Fugue unfolds with solemn fervor and Wagner’s Liebestod seethes with passion, while Bill Evans’ “Peace Piece” disarms with its simple message, exquisitely colored by one of the major pianistic talents of our time.

Igor Levit - the recent recipient of the prestigious Gilmore Artist Award and the Royal Philharmonic Society’s “Instrumentalist of the Year”- has now completed the recording of all 32 sonatas of Ludwig van Beethoven. In September 2019 this mammoth studio-recording project will finally be released and leads the way for important new releases on Sony Classical for Beethoven’s 250-year anniversary.