Igor Levit

The pianist Igor Levit was born in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, in 1987 and began studying  piano at the age of three. The family moved to Germany in 1995, and Levit continued his studies there with Karl-Heinz Kämmerling, Matti Raekallio, and Bernd Goetzke in Hanover before transferring to Hans Leygraf at the Salzburg Mozarteum. He launched his international career in 2005 at the Rubinstein Competition in Tel Aviv, where he won four prizes. Levit nowadays performs with renowned orchestras all over the world. The 2023-24 season includes close partnerships with the Vienna Philharmonic: a Brahms cycle under Christian Thielemann, a European tour conducted by Jakub Hrůša, and an appearance at the Salzburg Mozart Week. He is also undertaking tours with the Orchestra dell’Accademia di Santa Cecilia and the Berlin Baroque Soloists and performing with the Los Angeles and New York Philharmonics, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Staatskapelle Berlin, and the Staatskapelle Dresden. From 2019 to 2021, he performed the complete cycle of Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas at Lucerne Festival and the Salzburg Festival, as well as in Berlin, Hamburg, and Stockholm; he also released a recording of his interpretation. Levit has served as Co-Artistic Director of the Heidelberger Frühling since 2022 and in 2023 began curating his own piano festival at Lucerne Festival. Levit’s CDs have garnered numerous prizes. His 2023 album Fantasia contains works by Bach, Liszt, Berg, and Busoni, and the CD Lieder ohne Worte (Mendelssohn and Alkan) followed in February 2024 as a protest against the brutal terrorist attack on Israel by Hamas; the net proceeds go to charitable organizations. A film documentary, Igor Levit: No Fear, was released in 2022, and his book Hauskonzert was published in 2021. Igor Levit has been awarded the Gilmore Artist Award (2018), the Beethoven Prize (2020), and the Carl von Ossietzky Prize (2022). He received the Buber Rosenzweig Medal in March 2024.

Lucerne Festival debut on 11 September 2011 as the soloist in Scriabin’s Prométhée with the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Vladimir Jurowski.

March 2024