Her playing suffers neither from being too much in awe of the composer's ability to conjure so much from so little, nor does it underestimate that achievement.
That Beth Levin’s playing of Schumann is different from other pianists’ is what makes her work unique and markedly elevates the intrinsic merit of Personae.
The final movement, with its glorious main theme, is given a superb performance. You’ll be smiling throughout.
This is not just a version of the Goldberg Variations on piano, but one that unashamedly disregards its origins on the harpsichord, with old-school heavy pedaling and other pianistic effects that would have made Liszt proud.
From the first bars of the first movement, Moderato cantabile molto espressivo, we get an amazing sense of the piano “singing.”
Cherny Concert & Artist Management Ltd. proudly presents a solo recital with Brooklyn-based virtuoso pianist Beth Levin on Saturday, January 26th at 2:30pm at the Bruno Walter Auditorium of New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center.
She conjured a Schumann who shook the walls of the domestic and the amiable with monumental creations born of arm's-breadth confines.
For me, there is a sense of “rightness” in her playing and a feeling that when she started out, she knew just where she was headed.
There is an improvisatory quality to her playing, so that one has the feeling that on another day, she might play these two pieces differently. At the same time, at the moment you are listening you are convinced that this is the way the music must go.
Among all the living musicians that I had the honour to listen to Beth Levin is one of the most magic and overwhelming phenomenons, and absolutely singular.
When she rose at the end of each sonata, it seemed indecent to look at her—it was as if she had just gone through a holy ordeal that we profane spectators shouldn’t dare contemplate with bare eyes.
