Opera and classical home watching picks: critics pick their highlights

There’s a growing treasure trove of classical music to watch for free. Each day, our critics are selecting a highlight

How often has one of the world’s great pianists played live for you at home? Igor Levit is doing it every day for all of us. As the sun goes down, he walks over to the Steinway in his Berlin living room and gives a concert, live on Twitter. There’s absolutely no formality. Levit wears whatever he has got on that day. He gives a brief introduction, in German and English, maybe with a reflection or two on our strange times, for Levit has always been a concerned citizen in every sense, and these concerts come from the heart. Some nights he plays Beethoven. Other nights it’s Schubert or Brahms. The sound quality is often variable and poor but you hardly care about that. That’s because, if you really listen to, say, his playing of Schubert’s B flat sonata D960, he is saying something so much larger about the work he chooses. He is saying that music is humanity at its best and that we and it will survive. It’s the fact of Levit’s wish and need to play for his worldwide audience that makes this feel so gripping and life-enhancing. It is an artistic act that is at once very informal yet also deadly serious. Martin Kettle

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