Composer: Johann Sebastian Bach, Alban Berg, Ferruccio Busoni, Ferencz Liszt
Performer: Igor Levit
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Sony
Catalogue: 19658811642
Release: 2023
Size: 1.49 GB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
Bach: Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D major, BWV1068
01. Air (‘Air on a G String’)
Bach: Chromatic Fantasia & Fugue in D minor, BWV903
02. I. Fantasia
03. II. Fugue
Liszt: Piano Sonata in B minor, S178
04. I. Lento assai – Allegro energico
05. II. Andante sostenuto – Quasi adagio
06. III. Allegro energico
07. Liszt: Der Doppelganger (No. 12 from Schwanengesang, S560, after Schubert)
08. Berg: Klavierstück in B minor
09. Berg: Piano Sonata, Op. 1
1. Busoni: Fantasia Contrappuntistica
11. Busoni: Nuit de Noël
Igor Levit’s new double album Fantasia features a wide range of works spanning a period of almost two centuries from 1720 to 1910 and showcases key compositions by Franz Liszt, Ferruccio Busoni, Johann Sebastian Bach and Alban Berg. The starting point of the four paradigmatic works featured on the double album is the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Levit has chosen Bach’s exceptional Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue in D minor and combined it with Liszt’s B minor Sonata, a highly charged piece that at the time of its composition looked far ahead into the future (which Levit is currently performing to great acclaim all over the world), together with Busoni’s Fantasia contrappuntistica, in which Busoni perpetuated the Bach tradition, and Alban Berg’s only Piano Sonata. These four major works are complemented by four shorter pieces including Alexander Siloti’s arrangement of the famous Air from Bach’s Third Orchestral Suite, Liszt’s transcription of Schubert’s song Der Doppelgänger, Busoni’s Nuit de Noël and an early piano piece in B minor by Alban Berg. The CD comes with o-card and will be released internationally by Sony Classical.
It’s rare for a work as crucial to piano literature as Liszt’s “Sonata in B Minor” to be submerged beneath the thematic title of an album rather than being presented as its primary sales pitch. Yet the great pianist Igor Levit clearly knows what he’s doing. Titled Fantasia, his new double album on Sony Classical is dedicated to pieces that escape all formal frameworks, covering a period of almost two centuries from 1720 to 1910. His program begins with the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, which single handedly galvanised a good part of Western classical music, finishing with Franz Liszt, Alan Berg, and Ferruccio Busoni, all three of whom cite Bach in their works, the first two having composed sonatas that rely more on a “Fantasia” than on a precise form. This freedom of composition is the common thread of this fascinating program that comprises in one fell swoop Bach’s exceptional “Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue” and Ferruccio Busoni’s monumental “Fantasia contrappuntistica,” to which Levit responds with renditions of Siloti, Liszt, and Busoni. With his soft and supple sonority, Igor Levit is above all an introspective musician who doesn’t try to make an outrageous demonstration of Liszt’s sonata, haunted by Goethe’s Faust, nor does he do so with that of Alban Berg, whose twelve-tone writing doesn’t burn bridges with music history. With his unique imagination and emotional depth, Igor Levit takes us on a fascinating interior journey through time periods and innovative styles whose timeless and expressive forces never stop compelling us.