Igor Levit, Bach/Beethoven/Rzewski: album review

Download: The People United Will Never Be Defeated!

Igor Levit, Bach/Beethoven/Rzewski

This triple-disc set of Variations vaults across three centuries, from Bach’s Goldberg Variations and Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations to Frederic Rzewski’s latterday equivalent, The People United Will Never Be Defeated!, whose political intentions are reflected in such instructions as “In a militant manner”.

Levit nimbly negotiates the more difficult gear-changes of the Diabelli, as with the smooth shift from the frantic “Variation 23” to the calm of “Variation 24”, a seamlessly effected switch from extroversion to introversion.

Rzewski’s suite opens with a stolid statement of the “Thema”, instantly slipping into a more lyrical approach, before the first Variation seems to strip the theme back to a basic skeletal diagram.

Thereafter, it’s an absorbing voyage in which the theme often dips far below the horizon, from the bereft “Variation 5” to the tumult of “Variation 7” and the thumps, whistles and grunts of “Variations 11, 36 and 37”.