Igor Levit’s Masterclass at the Royal Academy of Music

It’s only April but I have decided that one of my greatest musical regrets in 2022 will certainly be missing Igor Levit’s Wigmore recital of the complete Shostakovich prelude and fugues on 4th Apr.

Igor came to my attention during lockdown in 2020, when he started performing house concerts through Instagram Live and Twitter. Since then, he has remained one of the top classical artists with an active social media presence, extending his influence to activism, thus pioneering a new image for classical musicians, one that is engaging with society rather than perpetuating the elitist image of tux and tie we often associate with classical musicians (see my post on Top 4 Classical Musicians with a great Instagram profile).

But, for Igor, putting on house concerts in front of a virtual audience wasn’t simply a casual livestream of practice sessions; his ability to perform 52 consecutive house concerts is a testament to the enormous repertoire he has under his fingers. For me, he is an ambitious pianist following the legacy of the Golden Age Greats such as Liszt, Busoni, Padarewski, Hoffmann and, more recently, John Ogdon, whose concerts can stretch on for hours on end, playing monstrous piece after monstrous piece, pieces the scale of which reach high above the clouds around Mount Olympus. The complete Bach Partitas were a walk in the park for him, so he went on to record three gargantuan variation sets in piano repertoire: Bach’s Goldberg, Beethoven’s Diabelli and Rzewski’s “The People United Will Never Be Defeated”. Having completed that, Igor went on to conquer and complete the Beethoven Sonatas. That not being enough, in 2021 he released his newest album “On DSCH”, which contains not only Shostakovich’s complete Prelude and Fugues, but also Ronald Stevenson’s hour-and-fifteen-minute-long “Passacaglia on DSCH” (DSCH being the initials of Dmitri Shostakovich), amounting to a staggering four hours of music. The album has since topped many classical charts. I simply could not miss the chance of seeing such a big personality when he decided to unload a handful of his most recent musical ideas onto two live Wigmore concerts in London. Unfortunately, I could not attend either concerts, but when I realized he was doing a masterclass at the Royal Academy of Music on the morning of the 5th, I set two alarms to make sure I get there on time.

I didn’t get there on time, but I got there. In between two concerts revolving around Shostakovich, Igor found time to give a masterclass at the Academy on Beethoven. The pieces to be played were originally Beethoven’s 4th and 5th piano concerti sandwiching his op. 110 sonata, but the amazing Gabrielė Sutkutė stepped in for the guy who was supposed to play “Emperor” with an amazing rendition of Beethoven’s 2nd concerto.

It’s nice to watch an artist give a masterclass; you get more of an idea of his personality through his communication, and Igor was a very good communicator indeed. I can see why he gravitated toward social media during lockdown; communication is essential to his professional ethos.

Igor often portrays himself as a trendy, hip, casual influencer on Instagram (which is where I follow him). Clad in a black shirt that hugged his stocky figure and sporting rather baggy black trousers, bearing casual mannerisms like flinging his water bottle in the air and gesticulating while the student played, he could quite easily disarm his audience with his easy-going attitude, and then quite literally spring on his unsuspecting victims with the deep knowledge he possesses of one of the greatest masters of classical music.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CaPFzWJA8lE/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

What I love about Igor’s teaching is his ability to respond to each student’s playing. Not in the sense that he brings out the best in each student, but in the sense that he respects the ideas of the student and respects his or her playing. He accompanied both concerti, and there was a real sense of spontaneous music-making rather than an effort to follow when Igor played the second-piano part. Even when the student took some movements at a ridiculously fast pace, he would merely laugh and say, “if that is how you want it, I’m all in”. As a spectator, it was great fun watching how they adapted to each other onstage, and there was a real sense of enjoyment in their musical collaboration which did not exclude the observer.

Often when I think of Beethoven, I think of a dam at capacity. If you try to introduce new ideas into the river, the dam bursts and the music collapses. Beethovenian interpretation is so saturated with history and scholarship it seemed hard to say anything new about him. Respect the score, every teacher will say, you’ll understand when you’re older. Don’t try to be smart with Beethoven. I think that’s why I am a little put off by Beethoven’s music, especially in conservatoire; I feel like I’m treading on thin lines everywhere I walk, so I’d rather not take any steps.

Igor does not refute this authoritative claim on Beethovenian interpretation; he was brought up in a strong German institution, so I imagine this thinking is rooted in him. However, in his masterclass, he really brought this idea to life by showing how this respect of the score might improve the way the music sounds, and how the music makes sense when such instruction is adhered to in a meaningful and understanding way. He may respect the students’ playing, but he was also very direct with what he thought, which was honestly what we as audiences wanted. He would tell the student to shed unnecessary artifices which they believed would “enhance” the music, and instantly the music would sound less pretentious and more natural. He would also be able to fully demonstrate what kind of sound he wanted to convey to the student, and his demonstration of how a certain passage in the first movement of the second concerto could go really, really quiet was nothing short of incredible. In short, he showed why it’s “cool” to have a deep understanding of Beethoven’s score. Honestly, I would not stand a chance against the trivia he gave his students onstage, like “how many pp’s did Beethoven write in this specific passage?”

One thing he said really stuck to me; he believed in “working on the basics; the musical interpretation will work itself into your performance the more you play the piece”. I really like this hands-on, practical approach.

But he wasn’t only inspiring in his knowledge; he was very much aware that he was giving a public lesson, and entertaining the audience was a key part of it. Not only did he draw much laughter with his jokes, calling a certain passage in the second movement of op. 110 “bat-shit crazy” and thus drawing Beethoven much closer to home, he also knew which bits to work on in order to milk the piece, as one would (probably never) say.

It was a very inspiring experience, seeing one of my favourite pianists live in the flesh, communicating to us through his teaching. The masterclass is a medium which suits Igor Levit really well, and in turn I got to witness a lot of this generous human being with an intention of sharing what he knows and loves with the world. In any case, his masterclass did motivate me to return to Beethoven’s music with a fresh pair of eyes, and I’m sure he’ll be happy to know that.