Igor Levit review – this pianist has got it all

Wigmore Hall, London
Levit livened up the post-Christmas lull with a recital that showcased his huge technical range and lovely touch

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.

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