On November 28, 2019, Igor Levit played a rarity in Leipzig's Gewandhaus: Hans Werner Henze's approximately forty-minute "Tristan", a six-part composition from 1974 for piano, tapes and orchestra - "distant, cool memory" (so Henze) of Wagner's music from " Tristan and Isolde".

The conductor was Franz Welser-Möst, and the Gewandhaus was jam-packed despite the repertoire that was fifty percent unfamiliar to the audience (the second half of the evening belonged to Strauss).

That was of course also due to Levit.

Andrew Plathaus

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The pianist, who was born in Gorki, Russia, in 1987 and has lived in Germany since 1995, is a star of his guild, the intensity of his playing just as famous as that of his social commitment, which was only recently expressed when Levit joined the newly founded PEN Berlin.

Now the P in PEN does not stand for pianist, but of course one cannot deny his art poetry.

And he tweets tirelessly.

That may have been enough for the prominent young association as proof of journalistic activities.

And hardly any other member has campaigned for the humanistic ideals represented by PEN in recent years with more publicity than Levit.

So it's no wonder that Levit's determination even made it into the title of a documentary dedicated to him, which is now being released in German cinemas: "Igor Levit - No Fear".

Regina Schilling accompanied the pianist with the camera for more than a year, and when shooting began in autumn 2019, neither of them could have guessed what kind of year it would be.

At the beginning of January 2020, Levit is sitting in a taxi and looking ahead to 108 concerts planned for the new year, "more than since 2014", his head sinking desperately against the backrest of the driver's seat in front of him.

Flat on his stomach on the recording studio floor

We will see Levit more often in states of emergency caused by repertoire strain, most impressively in the recordings of Ronald Stevenson's "Passacaglia on DSCH".

“Was he actually crazy?” the sound engineer Andreas Neubronner calls out to him from the editing room before Levit lies flat on his stomach on the floor of the recording studio at the end of the session – the most impressive, and also the most frightening, because the most intimate image in Schilling’s film.

The young man, who was just turning the pages for Levit, was at a loss;

he sneaks away and leaves the pianist.

But Levit will master the recording and later go on a solo tour with Stevenson's composition: double recitals each, once with the Passacaglia and then with Shostakovich's Preludes and Fugues.

In March 2022 he returned to the Gewandhaus with it.

What was Henze's reminiscence of Wagner in 2019 is Stevenson's homage to Shostakovich.

Levit is a great lover of great lovers in music history.

The pandemic lay between the Leipzig performances.

And most of Schilling's film.

Two months after the outbreak of desperation in the taxi, Levit has his last live performance for a long time on his birthday: in Hamburg's Elbphilharmonie with Beethoven's third piano concerto.

Friends came to congratulate, but their own family no longer for fear of Corona: "In the morning we will all be unemployed," Levit states and is right.