Igor Levit
(Sony Classical, three CDs)
Pairing Stevenson’s Passacaglia on DSCH with Shostakovich’s equally epic 24 Preludes is a unique combination of rarity and virtuosity
Two years ago, Igor Levit devoted a recital at the Wigmore Hall to Ronald Stevenson’s massive Passacaglia on DSCH. It was an extraordinary, unforgettable performance of one of the most singular works in the 20th-century piano repertoire, an 80-minute span of music, composed between 1960 and 1963, which contains a whole range of smaller forms within it, using the DSCH motto, a musical “spelling” ( D, E flat, C, B natural) of Dmitri Shostakovich’s initials, as the basis of the 13-note theme over which it seamlessly unfolds.
Levit’s recording of the Passacaglia, just as magnificent as it was live, is paired with Shostakovich’s equally epic set of 24 Preludes and Fugues, Op 87. That isn’t exactly an everyday work, especially in a complete performance, but Stevenson’s quirky masterpiece is the real rarity here. It’s conceived in the grand virtuoso tradition of Liszt, Alkan and Busoni, rarely heard in concert and recorded just five times previously, including one by the composer himself and another from the 1960s by John Ogdon that never seems to have been transferred to CD. As Levit shows so spectacularly, it takes a wild ride through a cornucopia of musical forms, quotations and allusions, with references ranging from Bach to 20th-century revolutionary songs – one passage is marked to be played “with an almost Gagarinesque sense of space”, a reference to the Soviet cosmonaut – and of course to Shostakovich, to whom Stevenson dedicated the work.