THENEWYORKER,M AY18, 2020 53
repertory but looms large in late-nine-
teenth and early-twentieth-century mu-
sical history. An Italian who settled in
Berlin, an archetype of German cosmo-
politanism, Busoni played many roles in
the culture of his time: as a composer of
multiple styles and selves; as a pianist of
mesmerizing powers; as a visionary the-
oretician; as a polemicist against reac-
tionary trends; and as the guru for a cir-
cle of pupils that included Kurt Weill
and Edgard Varèse. Matti Raekallio told
me, “Busoni showed what the artist can
be and should be: composer, performer,
artist, citizen. This is something Igor also
embodies. Playing the piano is just one
way of expressing himself. There is more
at stake than just getting the notes right.”
That expansive conception of the
performer’s role guided Levit’s quaran-
tine concert series. Early on, he favored
familiar fare, particularly Beethoven, but
as the weeks went by he grew more ad-
venturous. “My days as the healer of the
nation are numbered,” he joked to me
in early April. Shortly afterward, he
offered a suite of pieces on hard-left
themes: Paul Dessau’s “Guernica” (1938),
inspired by Picasso’s anti-Fascist paint-
ing of the previous year; Rzewski’s
“Which Side Are You On?,” based on
the mine workers’ song made famous
by Pete Seeger; and Cornelius Cardew’s
“Thälmann Variations” (1974), named
for Ernst Thälmann, a German Com-
munist leader who was murdered by the
Nazis. Another night, he essayed Ron-
ald Stevenson’s “Passacaglia on DSCH”
(1960–63), which declares solidarity with
Communist ideals and has a passage
marked “with a quasi-Gagarinesque
sense of space.” Levit highlighted such
political contexts in his remarks at the
piano. When he mentioned violence
against immigrants in modern Germany,
a troll surfaced in the Periscope chat
room, and was chased away.
During our Busoni chat, Levit mused
on what his Hauskonzerte might mean
for his future career. “Stevenson’s ‘Pas-
sacaglia’ is second to none,” he told me.
“It encompasses the entire world—Af-
rican drums, Scottish bagpipes, outer
space, everything. But, most of the time,
if I told a concert hall I wanted to play
it there’d be a polite silence. Here at
home, if I feel like doing it, I do it. And,
lo and behold, people are interested.” He
checked the archived video. “Twenty-six
thousand people have listened to the
Stevenson. Some were there only for a
few minutes, I know, but it proves some-
thing.” (One appreciative listener had
posted, “Without this concert my hori-
zons would be smaller.”) If Levit were
giving concerts now, he would be play-
ing programs that he had agreed to back
in 2017 or 2018. At home, he could choose
whatever pieces fit his mood an hour
before he turned on his camera. That
sense of urgency was especially strong
in Stevenson’s “Passacaglia,” in a seeth-
ing account of Busoni’s “Fantasia Con-
trappuntistica,” and in a two-and-a-half-
hour-long traversal of Shostakovich’s
Twenty-four Preludes and Fugues.
Undermining Levit’s newfound free-
dom was a deep dread for the future of
his art. The classical-music world was
already in a fragile economic state be-
fore the coronavirus struck. Now, with
large gatherings forbidden indefinitely,
an apocalypse looms. Levit does not
face the immediate crisis that has over-
whelmed so many working musicians:
he is well paid for his concert appear-
ances and recordings, and in 2018 he re-
ceived the Gilmore Artist Award—aprize of three hundred thousand dol-
lars that is given to a concert pianist
once every four years. Levit says, “Those
of us who are on the fortunate end of
the profession have to be really, really
careful about what we say, because so
many people are suffering. Still, I look
every day at the danger of my whole
world dying. Systemically, we are in
grave, grave danger. And I cannot say
that music matters less, that it is not ‘es-
sential.’ To me, it is absolutely essential.
It is my reason for being.”
Amid the agony of waiting, Levit
ponders how he might apply his recent
experiences to normal musical life, if
and when such a thing resumes. “When
I started doing these house concerts,”
he told me, “I realized that every single
problem I had ever had with the per-
forming world suddenly disappeared. I
never really cared about acoustics. I never
cared that much about the quality of
the piano. All I wanted to do was play.
The important point about these con-
certs is not how they sound but the fact
that they happened. Everything is get-
ting reduced to the essential thing of
being there and playing.”