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Reviewer: Myron
Silberstein Igor Levit is a musician of serious ambition. Many young pianists cut their teeth on technical showpieces and easily approachable Romantic chestnuts. Levit’s debut recording, released when he was barely over 25, contained Beethoven’s final five piano sonatas—repertoire apt to confound far more seasoned musical minds. But that recording was received with almost universal acclaim. Paul Orgel, writing in these pages, anticipated that the Beethoven recording would prove to be an introduction to “one of the 21st century’s important pianists.” Alex Ross wrote in The New Yorker that the recording initially led him to wonder “what prematurely hyped whippersnapper would introduce himself in such a fashion,” only to conclude upon hearing it that Levit is among “the most promising pianists of his generation.” Levit now turns to Bach’s partitas. The partitas are perhaps not in the hermetic realm of the Goldberg Variations but are by no means short on esotericism. The press release for the recording emphasizes the arduous preparatory regimen Levit undertook to understand these works: He steeped himself in the music of Bach’s precursors and then “spent three or four years on the partitas without performing them in concert.” In other words, the conception and development of this recording dates from perhaps 2009 or 2010, when Levit was about 22 years old. On the whole, I find Levit’s interpretation of Bach’s partitas to be a success. Perhaps the most gratifying aspect of the recording is Levit’s approach to ornamentation. He repeats both A and B sections of each dance movement and provides embellishments that are consistently tasteful but unpredictable. To single out two specific instances: the Fifth Partita’s Corrente is brilliant and bustling on its own; one might not imagine there would be room for more. Levit’s additions—a few rapid passing tones and a brilliant scale up to the final full measure—bring an extra dose of adrenaline to already exciting material. Likewise, Levit adds a generous helping of left-hand passagework to the First Partita’s Sarabande. This is far more interesting than the expected treble trills but does not become overly florid. And by dotting some of the steady eighth notes in the Fourth Partita’s Menuet, Levit makes an already jaunty piece even more so. Levit’s phrasing is generally idiomatic and intelligent. The bouncy staccatos on the first of each three-note left-hand group in the Sixth Partita’s Corrente, for example, creates a natural accent without removing focus from the active right-hand passagework. And Levit carefully matches the phrasing between voices in the fugato passages in the Second Partita’s Sinfonia. Levit’s instinct is to use terrace dynamics; that is, he remains at a consistent volume over long passages of music. But he tends to move from terrace to terrace via crescendo and decrescendo rather than by emulating a change in registration. Similarly, while his use of pedal never blurs harmonies, it is overly obvious in such places as the wide-ranging D-Major arpeggio toward the end of the Fourth Partita’s Allemande. And there is a general tendency for the right hand to overshadow the left, occasionally undermining the counterpoint. This may be an engineering issue, though; I prefer a drier piano sound for Bach, and I found the treble to be somewhat more brilliant overall than ideal. From a purely interpretative standpoint, Levit exhibits a good deal of refinement and restraint. His rubato is usually quite subtle, though in more lyrical movements I find it slightly too Romantic. I suspect Levit is striving for an improvisatory, parlando approach to Bach’s ornate melodic writing at such moments, but the momentary instances of surges and lingering tend to undermine the larger line. Likewise, Levit tends to underplay final cadences; the First Partita’s Praeludium, for example, ends with an unexpectedly gentle final chord and thus misses its potential as a fanfare to the partita as a whole. Also, my preference is for more energetic and emphatic allemandes, though Levit is hardly alone in treating them as primarily lyrical movements. I would not consider this recording to be the definitive interpretation of the partitas; listeners should not overlook Kirkpatrick, for example, or Schiff if interested specifically in a piano recording of the series. But this is most certainly a very good recording, and one that shows Levit continuing on a promising trajectory. | |
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