It is a mark of Igor Levit’s standing that he can sell out the Wigmore Hall weeks in advance with an all-Brahms programme. In the event, some fractious pre-concert jostling for returns seemed almost justified: this was an outstanding evening’s pianism.
When Brahms embarked on a remarkable year of composition in 1892, he was 59 – not especially old – and yet an almost unrelieved melancholy pervades the four sets of late piano pieces, which suggests either an irreparably broken heart or an awareness of his own mortality. (And, in fact, he only had five years to live.) It makes a traversal of these often inward-looking works a special challenge.
Levit does brooding well, his sombre frame drooping over the coffin-black piano in a self-effacing act of concentrated communion. He also does variety. His commanding technique, muscular yet flexible, suited the mood swings of the E-flat Rhapsody that concludes the Four Klavierstücke Op 119, or the hurly-burly of the capriccios that flank the Seven Fantasien Op 116. Mostly though, this was a supremely poetic performance, Levit moving body and soul to convey the spirit of these deeply personal utterances.
Take the mournful sarabande, with its Hungarian inflections underpinning the A minor Intermezzo of Op 116. Levit extracted every drop of beauty over four minutes of unruffled introspection. Here, as throughout, his sense of rubato was bold yet always appropriate. The first of the Three Intermezzi Op 117 – a folkish lullaby with a hint of a Scotch snap – was another jewel. Levit’s touch was deepest velvet, rendering the music peaceful yet simultaneously painful in an infinitely sad sort of a way. Shorn of intrusive theatricality, there was something intensely private about the music-making here. It felt a privilege to eavesdrop.
This was a recital where everything was just right, every phrase considered, every sonority given its proper weight and colour. Equally impressive was how Levit stitched these sometimes disparate pieces together to communicate a convincing architectural whole. When artistic director John Gilhooly came on stage at the end to award him the prestigious Wigmore Medal, rarely can it have felt better deserved.
