Pianist Igor Levit, who was born in 1987 in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, began studying piano at the age of three and gave his first concert with an orchestra at six. Two years later his family moved to Germany, where Levit continued studies with Karl-Heinz Kämmerling, Matti Raekallio, and Bernd Goetzke in Hannover; later he was a student of Hans Leygraf at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. In 2005 Levit garnered four prizes at the International Arthur Rubinstein Piano Master Competition, where he was the youngest participant, and also won the Hamamatsu Competition in Japan. Support from the German National Academic Foundation, the German Foundation of Musical Life, and the Jürgen Ponto Foundation soon enabled Levit to perform with such prestigious ensembles as the English Chamber Orchestra and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. He has played Prokofiev’s Second Piano Concerto with Andris Nelsons and the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra and that composer’s First Piano Concerto with John Axelrod and the NDR Symphony Orchestra; he has performed Schumann and Rachmaninov with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto with the Düsseldorf Symphony. As a chamber musician Levit partners with Lisa Batiashvili, Gautier and Renaud Capuçon, Maximilian Hornung, François Leleux, Mischa Maisky, and Maxim Vengerov. He has appeared at the Kissingen Summer Festival, where he won the Prince Luitpold Young Artists Prize in 2009, the Rheingau Music Festival, the Heidelberg Spring Festival, the Ansbach Bach Festival, the Bonn Beethoven Festival, the Ruhr Piano Festival, and the Stuttgart Music Festival. In May 2011 he was chosen to participate in the Rising Stars Program of the European Concert Hall Organisation: in connection with this he will give recitals in Hamburg, London, Cologne, Amsterdam, and other cities.
August 2011