Not for polite listening | Ernst Levy Plays Beethoven, Liszt & Levy

Unique intepretation | Ernst Levy Plays Beethoven, Liszt & Levy | Ludwig van Beethoven, Ernst Levy, ...

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	• Ernst Levy Plays Beethoven, Liszt & Levy Ludwig van Beethoven, Ernst Levy, ... Marston, 1998 average customer review:based on 6 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The best Liszt sonata ever recorded

The performance of the Liszt sonata offered here is more convincing than any other I have ever heard. Ernst Levy reveals himself as nothing less than a genius. If you can imagine a cross between Horowitz and Furtwangler, you may get some idea of Levy's abilities. That this CD is not better known or better regarded in classical music publications is a damning indictment of their critical flaccidity.

Not for polite listening

This disk is the aesthetic equivalent of getting your ears syringed. Its principal works are the Hammerklavier and last Beethoven sonatas and the Liszt sonata. The Beethoven is certainly memorable, with a fast, fiery first movement in op. 106 and a superb finale. The op. 111 is a dramatic performance, with a charged first movement and one of the slowest Ariettas ever.

But the real highlight is the Liszt sonata. I can see some people hating it. If you like, say, Pollini or Brendel, you should probably stay away. It is like nothing you have heard. Levy is very liberal in his interpretation of the score -- many will not like this, but it sure works for me. Just two highlights will suffice, amongst many. First, the appearance of the d-flat theme is magnificent, because Levy tones down the left hand to pianissimo, so that the theme sounds timeless. Second, the fugue is ferocious in its energy and zest. This is the most provocative reading you are likely to hear, but for me it comes together wonderfully well.

The rest of the disk is also very fine -- a fine Benediction and a dark Sposalizio are the other highlights. The recordings are rough and ready but serviceable.

Essential for those who like to hear something different.

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Unique intepretation

While I like all of the pieces on this 2 CD album, I would buy this for only the Liszt Sonata. I am a great fan of Jorge Bolet, one of the most well known interpreters of Liszt. Levy's interpretation of the Sonata sounds little like Bolet's (or anyone else's), yet there is still a romantic approach to have the music mean something beyond a technical tour de force. Levy puts a unique interpretation to this piece that is at once foreboding and tremendously engaging. I listen to this CD often, and I still find it thrilling in a way that few other recordings are.

Moreover, the Marston transfer of the Sonata is so good that one hears not only the music, but also Levy's fingers striking the keys! (A few other pieces are from much noisier source recordings, such as the Annes de Pelerinage). It seems as of this writing this first volume is out of print at the Marston website - although later volumes are still available. (And one can still buy Marston's collection of Bolet performances of Chopin which is an equally compelling 2 CD package with many rare performances.)

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An Artist of Transcendent Vision

In college, I encountered two musical landmarks that took me longer to assimilate than any other music I had heard in my fairly extensive listening experience to date. One of these was Debussy's *La mer*. The other was Liszt's B-minor Sonata. Each presented a self-generating musical landscape in which familiar forms and processes had barely taken root, leaving me to wander through them many times before I felt I knew my way through the forest.

Over the years, I have collected more than a dozen performances of the Liszt Sonata: Andsnes, Argerich, Arrau, Cliburn, Curzon, Darré, Horowitz, Pollini, Rubinstein, et al. But I have no hesitation in declaring that Levy makes nearly all the competitors sound as if they don't really know what the piece is about. More relentlessly than anyone else, Levy puts you in touch with the fearsomely elemental *wildness* of Liszt's conception. You want demonic? Here it is, in (pitchforks and) spades. You want angelic? There's lyricism enough to melt a stone. I couldn't care less whether Levy is following Liszt's instructions to a T. He makes the piece make sense on his terms, and those terms are entirely coherent, intelligent, and convincing. In short, he plays the Sonata as if he'd written it himself. (Since Franz was addicted to rearranging damn-near everything within earshot, he's hardly going to roll over in his grave.) And thank goodness, the mono sound has the clarity and weight to bear the gravity of his conception.

Throughout this titanic Sonata, the sublime *Bénédiction*, the *Sposalizio*, and the 12th Hungarian Rhapsody, Levy emerges as a Liszt player of the highest imaginative fantasy -- a pianist with big ideas and the technical equipment to reveal them to our fortunate ears. (Just listen, for example, to the airy spontaneity with which he tosses off Liszt's decorative filigree.) He thunders, he caresses, he sighs, he confesses. The emotional gamut is every bit as huge as it should be.

No less impressive are the Beethoven sonatas. Op. 111 ranks among the sublimest traversals, crowned by one of the most intimately poignant valedictory codas anywhere. Op. 106 is marvelously conceived (with as poetic a slow movement as one could wish for). Alas, in the great fugue, dozens of unnerving, splice-induced pitch fluctuations spoil the grand effect. Admittedly, Beethoven's fugue strains the limits of tonality, but the engineering lapses here push intonation past incoherency. (This is the only recording in stereo and one of the few major works here *not* engineered by the excellent Peter Bartók, son of Béla.)

But don't let this one blemish deter you from reaching for one of the loftiest peaks in the annals of piano recording. Every piano-lover should hear this man. Yes, he is often strikingly different. But what can you learn from bland, cookie-cutter performers? Levy helps you rethink how these pieces are put together. His performances are intellectually rigorous and profoundly moving acts of spiritual blessing from an age when most artists still knew what spirit is. These discs preserve the precious insights of a great and fearless soul. Grab them if you can, and be grateful.

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A maverick with a titanic sound

Listening to Ernst Levy, I'm reminded of Mahler's dictum, "Tradition is slovinliness." Throughout this set the pianist plays music very differently from "the way it's supposed to go." But who determines how it's supposed to go? Usually, past a point of reading a score and applying certain basic logic, popular consensus. In this age of Ashkenazy, Goode and Brendel, people like Levy sound like anachronisms from other times. And they may be. God bless them.

This CD features Levy in a terrifying reading of the Liszt sonata. And I mean terrifying. The piano sounds *threatening* for the first time in this work--like some primal beast--but also, in the softer parts, sweetly consoling. It's exactly the sort of almost bipolar interpretation I've always thought the B minor sonata needed. Other pianists (Argerich, Pogorelich) have wrung out the keyboard over the years with these notes, but even they sound like well-behaved Sunday school children compared to Levy. I imagine the piano was a heap of dust after he finished this performance. Dynamics are extreme: Bass lines thunder; pianissimos are carressed to the point that they are barely audible and are sensed more than heard. The tempo shifts every few seconds--probably more like the way Liszt played it, because they reportedly took big chance back then. Most importantly, there is a feeling of perpetual motion and constant morphing of the music like I've never heard before--BUT, he never gets lost in the structure. He knows where he is every moment, and so do we. There are admittedly some sloppy passages here and there, but this again just marks Levy as a throwback to an earlier era that wasn't as concerned with note-perfect playing. The Benediction that follows the B minor is beautifully played and equally memorable, if not as stunningly distinct an animal. A few of Levy's own small compositions are included as filler. They are pleasant, but he was a great pianist, not a great composer.

The Beethoven is a little more problematic, admittedly. Schnabel, who sought (unsucessfully) to perform the Hammerklavier at or near the indicated metronome markings, would not agree with Levy's interpretation, which would be called expansive if one is being charitable and a bit flaccid if one is not. I'm inclined to the latter. I have no trouble with a big, epic Hk--Arrau does not rush tempi and his is one of my favorite recordings--but here the tension sags, and the playing is sometimes soft and soggy, with a lack of accent. The strife, the fight to the summit, is missing, and thus is some of the uniqueness of this work, in my opinion. This recording needs more energy in its outer movements, though the scherzo is light and deft (and perhaps the most poetic I've heard) and the slow movement is gorgeously still and eternal, with all the spirituality that implies. The finale is the biggest eyebrow-raiser. Levy adopts a tempo and a rhythmic stance that suggests Bach instead of Beethoven. Whether it works or not will depend on your taste or mood that day, but one thing is clear: at a slower tempo colors and harmonics are highlighted that in other, fleeter recordings whiz by too fast to appreciate. This is not how I'd want to hear my Hammerklavier every day, but it's an interesting and worthy alternative when you already have about ten "straight-ahead" versions.

Even more striking and successful, to my ears, is his Op. 111. This is my favorite Beethoven piano sonata, and I think its Arietta is one of the greatest movements in piano literature. No interpretation can plumb the depths, but this one is pretty remarkable, with a quality of "stopped time" that comes closest to Schnabel's unsurpassed 1933 account on HMV. The slow variations are miraculous. They are the musical equivalent of staring into a perfectly clear and still pond, and I'm convinced this extremely simple, distilled quality is exactly what Beethoven was looking for. The movement builds to a big climax that makes it clear Levy considered Beethoven to be the first romantic. The coda walks on water--again, the pianissimo notes are more felt than heard.

The 2-disc set is well-done. The liner notes by Donald Manildi and Frank Cooper are extremely detailed and informative. They chronicle a major pianist who has slipped from our consciousness.

If you enjoy this set, get the subsequent two volumes as well. They may be out of print, but can be found used if you look a bit, and may also still be available from Marston directly. (He does direct mail.) These may not be the first versions of these works you want, but they do belong on your shelf.

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The Swiss pianist and composer Ernst Lévy spent several decades teaching and giving rare concerts in the United States. His few LPs for the Kapp and Unicorn labels are highly sought-after collectors' items, and this set demonstrates why. In huge pianistic challenges like Beethoven's "Hammerklavier" Sonata and the Liszt Sonata, Lévy's conceptions, technique, and gigantic sound are almost overwhelming. Never mind a few messy passages; this is grand, memorable playing. The few small pieces by Lévy show him as a fine composer, too, although he was most successful in large forms. This set should go beyond the limited appeal of most mono piano reissues; it's one for the ages. -- Leslie Gerber

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Tracks
Piano Sonata No. 29 In B-flat, Op. 106, 'Hammerklavier': I. Allegro | Piano Sonata No. 29 In B-flat, Op. 106, 'Hammerklavier': II. Scherzo: Assai vivace | Piano Sonata No. 29 In B-flat, Op. 106, 'Hammerklavier': III. Adagio Sostenuto: Appassionato e con molto sentimento | Piano Sonata No. 29 In B-flat, Op. 106, 'Hammerklavier': IV. Largo: Allegro risoluto | Piano Sonata No. 32 In C Minor, Op. 111: I. Maestoso - Allegro con brio ed appassionato | Piano Sonata No. 32 In C Minor, Op. 111: II. Arietta: Adagio molto semplice e cantabile | Piano Sonata In B Minor: Lento assai - Allegro energico | Piano Sonata In B Minor: Andante sostenuto | Piano Sonata In B Minor: Allegro energico | Benediction de Dieu dans la solitude, Harmonies Poetiques et Religieuses No. 3 | Sposalizio, Annees de Pelerinage, Seconde Annee-Italie: No. 1 | Hungarian Rhapsody No. 12 In C-sharp Minor | Pieces For Piano: No. 6 | Pieces For Piano: No. 7 | Pieces For Piano: No. 8 | Pieces For Piano: No. 9 | Pieces For Piano: No. 18

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