Igor Levit: Tristan
Sony Classical

The epic reach of Igor Levit's Tristan is intimated by the mist rising behind the pianist in its dramatic cover photo, a character that carries over into the double album's ambitious programme and themes. Love, death, and redemption are probed intensively in works by Wagner, Liszt, Mahler, and Henze, with only one of the pieces originally conceived for solo piano. It's not the first time Levit has explored profound idea, his 2018 release Life and two years later Encounter also revealing his propensity for the philosophical examination of existential themes.

Extending from around 1837 to 1973, the five works are thoughtfully sequenced. In the first half, Liszt's Liebestraum No. 3 provides an enticing prelude to Henze's six-part Tristan, the pianist's first concerto recording with the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig under the direction of Franz Welser-Möst. Having weathered that monumental storm, one's rewarded with the romantic bliss of Wagner's “Prelude,” the towering “Adagio” from Mahler's unfinished Symphony No. 10, and finally Liszt's Harmonies du soir, the eleventh of his twelve Études d'exécution transcendante. It is, quite simply, a remarkable and provocative collection, for both the inclusion of the Henze piece and the Mahler treatment.

Levit draws the listener into the project with Liszt's sparkling nocturne in A-flat major, whose dream-like reveries the pianist delivers with consummate command and control. He then turns his attention to material that's considerably more demanding. Described by Henze as a set of “Preludes for piano, tape and orchestra,” Tristan is vast in scope and varied in design, combining as it does solo piano passages, a tape episode, orchestral writing, and more into a sweeping forty-five minute design (Anselm Cybinski's liner notes provide extensive background on the work's genesis and form). Completed in 1973 in Venice, the site of Wagner's death ninety years earlier, Tristan contains within it references to him, of course, but also to the funeral march from Chopin's Second Sonata, Renaissance polyphony, and Brahms' First Symphony. The atmospheric “Prologue” assumes shape slowly, emerging as it does in shadowy, almost eerie manner and the orchestra commenting restrainedly on the piano expression. The writing's astringent and the mood ponderous, yet the material's nonetheless engrossing, especially for the way the orchestra and keyboard entwine. Without pause, the work transitions into “Lament,” the orchestra now taking a more prominent role and the activity level rising intensively, after which “Prelude und Variations” features Levit ruminating unaccompanied before being augmented by the orchestra's bluster. “Tristan's Folly” follows, the music swelling agitatedly, the percussive dimension expanding colouristically, and a sense of disorientation setting in as the music splinters into shards. The work's longest part, the fourteen-minute “Epilogue,” concludes it with, first, a wide-ranging piano exploration and then a brief tape component that features a child reading a passage from a medieval Tristan poem as the strings quote Wagner. As explorative as Henze's work is, it surprisingly exemplifies coherence, due in no small part to the expert realization by the pianist and orchestra.

Easier on the ears is the release's second half, which begins with a piano arrangement by Zoltán Kocsis of the “Prelude” from Tristan und Isolde. Levit gives affecting voice to its yearning and its distinguishing “Tristan chord,” described by Carl Dahlhaus as “the most famous dissonance in the history of music” and comprised of an augmented fourth superimposed on a pure fourth. Favouring a slow tempo, the pianist paces the performance carefully so as to maximize emotional tension, after which another mountain's scaled in the form of the “Adagio” from Mahler's tenth symphony, this treatment an arrangement by Scottish composer Ronald Stevenson. The turmoil that emerges within the piece might be attributed to the fact that in 1910 the composer learned of his wife Alma's affair with the architect Walter Gropius as he was writing the work's opening movement (Gropius apparently haven mistakenly addressed a love letter to Gustav instead of Alma). In a remarkable performance oscillating between elegiac, sardonic, light-hearted, and angst-ridden passages, Levit sustains attention for the full twenty-eight minutes. Though the composer's distinctive orchestral textures are absent, the solo piano treatment does much to engage when the transcription amplifies dissonances in Mahler's writing that might otherwise be less noticeable in an orchestral version. Liszt's Harmonies du soir comes as a welcome antidote to the emotionally taxing creations by Henze, Wagner, and Mahler, though it's hardly a lightweight either. Initially peaceful in tone, the piece ripples resplendently for ten minutes, advancing as it does through lyrical and declamatory passages until reaching a becalmed resolution.

Tristan is an immensely rewarding listen, even when the material is as challenging as Henze's. However daunting, it's a work that deserves to be heard, and the realization here is strong. That it's accompanied by Levit's solo treatments of the Mahler “Adagio” and Wagner “Prelude” makes the release all the more commendable. It'll be interesting to see what Levit does as a follow-up; for now, Tristan is a journey well worth taking.

October 2022