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New Sony Classical album will draw on experiences of lockdown

Pianist Igor Levit, who won Gramophone’s Record of the Year in 2016 with his triple album of Bach, Beethoven and Rzewski, has announced his next release.

Called ‘Encounter’, it will feature arrangements by Busoni of chorale preludes by Bach, Brahms’s Vier ernste Gesänge arranged by Reger, Reger’s Nachtlied arranged by Julian Becker, and finally Palais de Mari, Morton Feldman’s final work for solo piano.

According to Sony Classical, Levit’s label, the album, full of internal connections between composers, 'seeks sounds that give inner strength and support for the soul. In works by Bach to Max Reger, based on poignant vocal compositions, the desire for encounters and human togetherness is given expression – at a time when isolation is the order of the day.'

Levit himself relates the programme to his experiences in the recent coronavirus lockdown, during which he live-streamed daily house concerts, and gave a 20-hour performance of Satie’s Vexations. 'The restricted isolation in the weeks since mid-March 2020 was often difficult for me too. As an artist, however, I have never felt so free, so open in my life as on those days when I often only decided half an hour before the live stream what I would play in my house concerts.

'Being able to make music without any compulsion and spontaneously choosing works in which all questions about love and death, loneliness and the possibility of real love for others are examined, has given my piano playing a level of freedom that I had never before experienced in this form.'

IGOR LEVIT -- ENCOUNTER - SONY