To Cope With Loss, a Pianist Mined the Music of Life Itself

NEW YORK — After a streak of ambitious recordings, the pianist Igor Levit didn’t have plans for his next album.

“I felt like I said what I needed to say, and now I needed time off,” Levit, 31, said in an interview this week. “Then my best friend died.”

That friend, the artist Hannes Malte Mahler, was killed in an accident while biking in 2016. The tragedy drove Levit back to the recording studio for his new album, “Life,” which he called “the most forthcoming thing I’ve ever done.”

The two-hour record — which Levit will perform much of next Friday at Zankel Hall, downstairs at Carnegie Hall — is a sweeping exploration and celebration of life itself, with luminous transcriptions of Bach and Wagner, as well as works by Busoni, Liszt, Schumann, Frederic Rzewski and Bill Evans. In the booklet is a lengthy poetic dedication to “Dear Hannes.”

“It’s not therapy; it didn’t make anything better,” Levit said of the album. “But this felt necessary to me.”

The heart of “Life” is “A Mensch,” a piece Rzweski wrote for a friend who was in the hospital — and something Levit and Hannes Malte Mahler had heard together in concert. The rest of the album, however, changed 30 to 40 times before Levit landed on a final selection.

What he came up with is perhaps the most profound achievement yet in a young but already important career; “Life” befits an artist who this year won the $300,000 Gilmore Artist Award. Particularly stunning are the transcriptions, including Busoni’s of Liszt’s mammoth Fantasia and Fugue on the chorale “Ad nos, ad salutarem undam” (which was in turn adapted from Meyerbeer’s opera “Le Prophète”).

Liszt’s solo piano version of the Solemn March to the Holy Grail from Wagner’s “Parsifal” is a quiet prayer and a showstopper. It’s a triumph of transcription, with the power to conjure a cathedral with only two hands and dynamics that rarely exceed mezzo piano. The notes are not difficult to hit, but it takes extreme control to achieve the quality of Levit’s recording.

He said that when he recorded the “Parsifal” transcription, early one morning at a church in Berlin, where he lives, he paired it with Evans’ “Peace Piece,” which serves as the album’s life-affirming conclusion — a message, Levit said, that “as long as you’re alive, the sun will rise and you have to keep going.”

That dogged optimism, he added, is a reflection of “who I am right now.” Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.

A: Life goes on; pieces survive beyond any one person. It’s very much the idea of free music: something the composer gives to the musician and says, “This is the musical text, but it’s yours to liberate.” Then the text can be used in new ways, so that the notes on paper become music again. And Busoni is one of my heroes.

A: I did once, as a student. And we are in conversations about it. I promise you, I will play it again.

A: I wanted to play the Busoni, but it didn’t feel right. It’s more of a concert piece, but the Brahms is very naked and pure. And I wanted the piece to be as pure as possible. I’m using my own words, but Brahms wrote to Clara Schumann that it was impossible to understand how this man put so much — everything — into one piece for this little instrument [the violin]. I very much agree with that. The Brahms is I think almost skeletonlike; I wanted it to be that way. I’m also thinking of a friend who called me and said that if one human being can do this with one left hand, what can we all do with one small effort?

A: I can’t play this piece twice in a row. It hurts like hell, like a needle in your back. You have to be incredibly physically tense and relaxed at the same time. If you move around too much, it ruins your flow. After six or seven minutes, some muscles start burning. I can’t relax in this piece; it’s just so controlled and measured.

A: You don’t realize how hard it is, but it is artistically, emotionally one of the most demanding things to play. Achieving a prayerlike atmosphere and having absolute control of the sound, line, tempo, everything — it is really, really hard.

I can never really let go in the “Parsifal,” not even when it gets really loud, bell-like. It’s not like the “Liebestod,” where you can let go. There are no waves; it’s just like a steady line. And it is, of course, overwhelming.

A: [Laughing] Can you please not ask me that? The arc is wide, from sleep to alcohol: whatever feels right. It’s not easy, for sure.

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Additional Information:

Igor Levit

Oct. 19 at Zankel Hall, Manhattan; carnegiehall.org.