8 1GT Wednesday September 16 2020 | the times

arts

A

s halls tentatively

reopen their doors,

and musicians

who were cooped

up without live

audiences for

months are once

again able to see a

real crowd, one thing that’s clear is

how different the concert atmosphere

has become. Last week I was one of

12 in the hall to hear Simon Rattle

conduct the London Symphony

Orchestra. It’s an experience that

makes you, the listener, virtually

part of the performance.

One person not rueing the loss of a

big crowd is Igor Levit. The star pianist

is buzzing with excitement as he

releases an album that was born out

of his lockdown months and prepares

for a recital at the newly reopened

Wigmore Hall today. The 33-year-old

Berliner, whose family emigrated from

Russia to Germany when he was eight,

was one of the stars of this year’s

salvaged Salzburg Festival, where he

was able to play a complete Beethoven

sonata cycle to distanced audiences.

“And many people in the audience

did something I’d been dreaming

about for years and years, which is to

actually see their own importance,” he

tells me from his flat in the centre of

the German capital. “Every single gig

became very tender, very focused. For

three weeks I’d been playing all these

sonatas, a lot of repertoire in a short

period of time. But there wasn’t a

single day that I was tired. It felt like

I was playing from home.”

Levit is certainly now used to

performing from home. In fact, even

though on my computer screen I can

see an old pair of Levit’s socks on his

sofa, I am zooming one of the most

visited concert halls in Europe,

at least during the past six months.

On March 12, the day after lockdown

in Germany, Levit ran out to a local

electronics shop, bought some kit

and started streaming via Twitter.

“Let’s bring the house concert into

the 21st century,” he said before the

first performance. He continued for

another 51 concerts, without a day’s

break. For one night he left his flat

and broadcast from the official

residence of the president of Germany,

Frank-Walter Steinmeier, at

Steinmeier’s invitation.

“It wasn’t an act of panic,” Levit says

about the house concerts. “I was

playing from a platform where I have

built a certain trust.” (Levit has more

than 100,000 followers on Twitter, a

figure that has been rising dramatically

since he promised to play an entire

piano reduction of Wagner’s Die

Walküre if he hit 150,000). “What really

blew me away was how many people

would listen every night. The average

was between 20,000 and 30,000.”

He avoided all other music online

during lockdown, with an exception

made for Yo-Yo Ma’s Songs of Comfort

series. Yet Levit’s agenda was different.

“My intention was not to comfort. My

intention was also not to show anger.

All I wanted was to be very frank, just

to play whatever I thought was right.”

His programmes included Bach,

Beethoven, Schubert, Henry Mancini,

Nina Simone and Janis Ian. “And what

I realised over the time of this entire

period is that I was basically living my

dream. No musical hierarchies, no

discussions about what is good

repertoire and bad repertoire.”

After he played Morton Feldman’s

challengingly austere Palais de Mari

Levit received a letter from one

listener. “He said that the piece

created a space for a kind of self-

encounter. I like this idea.” From this

lofty conception was born a typically

invigorating new album, Encounter,

which features the Feldman alongside

Every

single gig

became

very

tender

other prayerful works that had

appeared in those months, including

Brahms and Bach chorale preludes

virtuosically arranged by Busoni.

After 52 house concerts Levit called

a halt. Still, he saved one more feat

for his online audience at the end of

May, streaming Eric Satie’s Vexations

— a piece in which the composer

instructed that just four enigmatic

lines of music were to be played 840

times. Possibly Satie never meant

anyone to do it. With a few toilet

breaks, Levit dispatched the whole

thing in 15 hours, finishing at 5.

on a Sunday morning. Each identical

phrase was printed out on 840 pieces

of paper, which Levit threw on the

floor around him as he continued. He

has raised €25,000 for out-of-work

musicians by auctioning the pages.

It wasn’t a gimmick. “From now on,

if you stream, you shouldn’t just copy-

paste normal programmes and stream

them. What’s the reason to stream

something? The Satie felt perfect, first

of all because of the monotony, the

senselessness. Secondly, whenever

people criticise streaming, they always

say, ‘Oh, but the focus of listeners is

so short, they will only listen for two

minutes.’ Well, the Satie is two

minutes long, so in a way it’s an

incredibly democratic experience.”

When Levit left the keyboard in the

small hours, he was “next-level high”.

He took a friend for breakfast. “By

midday I was kind of drunk.”

There is no filter on Levit’s Twitter.

The social network, he concedes, can

be “a dumpster place, an awful place.

I try to be a good guy there, to do my

stuff. I play music, I make my jokes,

I attack certain people from the

political... let’s call it the political

asshole side. I am who I am.”

Levit’s ire over the past few years

has been focused against what he

believes is an emboldened extreme

right-wing movement in Germany

that rallies under the banner of the

AfD (Alternative für Deutschland).

The vast majority in Germany are not

such extremists, he says, “but it is the

weakness of the majority that creates

the strength of the extreme right. And

we have neo-fascists on the street and

a neo-fascist party in parliament.”

His campaigns on the subject have

led to death threats, which briefly

resulted in him needing police

protection. Is he scared? “If someone

wants to threaten me, go ahead,” he

says. “I won’t change my way of life

and, sorry to the London Times for my

language, but here’s the message to

these people: f*** off. F*** them.”

Who was responsible for the threats?

“Neo-Nazis, who realise that today

you need nothing more than to

press down on the phone to ruin

someone’s life.”

Levit argues that this is the real

“cancel culture” and that conservative

fears about anxious snowflakes

completely miss the point. “There are

animals from the extreme right who

can shut people up, threaten people’s

lives. If you want to talk about cancel

culture, let’s talk about that. And not

about the fact that some old dudes are

getting offended because we want to

take some statues down.”

We’ve strayed quite far from the

genteel Wigmore Hall. Levit was

supposed to have reprised his full

sonata cycle at the London venue in

this Beethoven year. He is not exactly

in mourning for the 2020 Beethoven

celebrations that never happened.

“Every single year, as you know, is a

Beethoven year.” His concert, which

will also be streamed, is a programme

hinged around the Waldstein Sonata,

a work that he calls “the piece of no

return. There is no Lisztian piano

world without Waldstein, there is no

Hammerklavier, no Appassionata

Sonata without Waldstein. There’s a

piano music reality before and after.”

If Levit has his way, there may be

a new music reality coming after

Covid too. Other musicians may be

less optimistic about a future where

concert halls can’t balance the books

and fees plummet, but this is not

something Levit dwells on. “Audiences

have become an essential part of the

story. Not only because of whether

there are 100, 50 or 20 of them, but

because people have actually started

asking, ‘Well, how did you feel about

that, what you just heard?’ Honestly,

to hell with corona; if only this will

remain when things get back to

normal, I would be beyond happy.”

Encounter is out on

Sony Classical. Igor

Levit plays at the

Wigmore Hall in

London today (7.30pm),

available on demand

for one month

(wigmore-hall.org.uk)

The pianist Igor Levit has been tweeting his solo performances

ROBBIE LAWRENCE; BORIS FROMAGEOT

‘What blew

me away was

how many

would listen’

Pianist Igor Levit tells Neil Fisher

about streaming concerts from

home and his fight with the far right Igor Levit