Great Performers

Artist

Igor Levit, piano

Program

I

Ronald Stevenson (1928-2015)

Peter Grimes Fantasy (1971-72)

Robert Schumann (1810-1856)

Fantasy in C major, Op. 17 (1836)

II

Richard Wagner (1813-1883)

Prelude from Tristan und Isolde, WWV 90 (1859. Arr. by Zoltán Kocsis)

Franz Liszt (1811-1886)

Piano Sonata in B minor, S. 178 (1853)

Levit’s Return

After his unforgettable debut at the Patio de los Arrayanes in 2020 with the last three Beethoven sonatas, Igor Levit returns to the Festival, this time with a very original program that starts with a work by the Scotsman Ronald Stevenson, a full-fledged tribute to Benjamin Britten and his most famous dramatic work, Peter Grimes. Followed by one of Schumann’s fundamental works, his Fantasy op. 17, a creation conceived in 1836 with a double inspiration: Beethoven and the young Clara, his wife-to-be, from whom he was separated at the time due to harsh parental opposition. Levit does not abandon the world of fantasy or that of the theatre, because then follows the arrangement that Zoltán Kocsis made for the piano of Wagner’s Prelude to Tristan and Isolde, an inexcusable summit in the history of opera. For the second part, he leaves one of the greatest works in the history of the piano, Liszt’s Sonata in B minor, a cyclical work of formidable architecture and compelling virtuosity, which enthused Wagner.