The Swiss born Ernst Levy, pedagogue, composer, teacher, choirmaster,
writer and – not least – astonishing pianist, here receives a second volume
from Marston. Born in Basle he received training from Pugno and from Petri
– illustrious teachers – and moved to Paris as a choral conductor giving
the premiere of, amongst other things, Brahms’s German Requiem and Liszt’s
Christus. He spent nearly thirty years in the United States having escaped
from Paris before the Nazi onslaught. Retiring in 1966 he returned to
the country of his birth and lived a long and contented life there, dying
in 1981.
Once more Levy’s Beethoven continues to provoke a wide
divergence of responses. The Appassionata is a massive and mammoth delineation
with huge dynamic gradients and rhythmic distensions. In the Andante
con moto there is a wonderfully deep sonority that activates the line
but also occasional holdings back and dissipation of momentum that prove
less convincing on second hearing. In the third movement there is an
admixture of deliberation and almost vicious declamation and it strikes
me as too fractious and devastatingly abrupt for full and proper clarity
of articulation – however exciting and visceral it may be. Here Levy
seems to sacrifice genuine internalised clarity for almost existential
power. Levy’s pianism, especially his Beethoven, is one bound to divide
opinion. He has a powerfully intellectualised vision and all the technical
means at his disposal to commit that vision to the listener – but within
it there is agogic and rhythmic licence that is equally powerfully personalized
and will antagonise as much as it excites and convinces. No bad thing,
perhaps, in Beethoven of all composers.
In Op 101 a convulsive flexibility courses through
the Sonata with consistently enlightening results; its grandiloquent
conclusion is full of affirmatory and triumphant playing. Op 109 though
begins with a degree of rather fussy and manicured phrasing before Levy
digs in and generates considerable reserves of drama and colour and
energy – his technique is not simply robust, it’s fantastic. In the
Prestissimo second movement he is, following the indication, very quick
but inner voicings are still brought out even at this speed and control
is marked and triumphant. The opening movement of Op 110 is hardly Moderato,
cantabile molto expressivo in Levy’s hands and there is instead his
by now accustomed disruptive and insistent phrasing. I hesitate to call
this mannerism because it seems to me that that conveys entirely the
wrong account of the meaning behind Levy’s Beethoven playing which is
entirely above such point scoring or laziness of rhythmic inflection.
It is powerfully thought out and absolutely engaged musicianship albeit
of the type that will provoke considerable negative reactions as well
as affirmatory ones. In the slow movement of the same movement for example
I found his vigorous accents rather unsettling and the whole of the
first part of the Adagio similarly hobbled – disjunct and undercut –
but he certainly picks up for the Fuga which is full of expressive clarity
– very special playing indeed.
His Haydn is romantic but not as wilful or idiosyncratic
as his Beethoven. The A Flat Sonata has delicious leading voices in
the opening movement and an elevated nobility in the second. The finale
points up the vivacity of Haydn’s writing. He catches the humour in
the B Minor but equally has the confidence and acuity in Haydn playing
to demonstrate true simplicity. The two final pieces are taken from
his rare c1929 Sonabel 78s.
Volume Two lives up to the expectations generated by
the earlier set. Levy is technically outstanding, architecturally and
intellectually probing, a musician of conviction and powerfully individualized
responses. For people who don’t know him – and that’s most people –
they can now more fully become acquainted with a pianist who treats
Beethoven as the colossus he is. In no small measure Marston adds to
the merit by virtue of transfer quality and notes – in this volume a
joint essay by Donald Manildi and Gregor Benko and a musical discussion
by Frank Cooper. Responses to Levy will be definitively polarised but
he’s a pianist who demands to be heard.
Jonathan Woolf
Ernst Levy, piano 