PIANIST

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.

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.

She conjured a Schumann who shook the walls of the domestic and the amiable with monumental creations born of arm's-breadth confines.

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.