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Usually Beethoven is poundy-poundy-poundy as pianists enjoy the vigor that comes from playing with the full storm of humanity’s love-hate embrace of science to shake a fist at nature and simultaneously declare human emotion as paramount and human effort as being on the edge of augmented greatness—at least it felt like this in the early 1800s.
Or at least that is our collective fantasy of what it felt like. So when people play Beethoven today, you get a lot of loud baNGING.
Igor Levit, however, does something different. He plays Beethoven in a way that reflects the composer’s intellect, precision, and poetic thoughtfulness.
Listen to Igor’s take on the sonatas here and hear Beethoven again for the first time.