Beth Levin: Blackbird & Ancestors

Beth Levin is one of the most noble musicians to touch the piano. Not only is she one of the most prodigiously gifted, but she is also one of the best-trained, students in music [of course you have to be one], celebrated for her ‘volcanic temperament, heartfelt lyricism and a sober sense of complex structures, trained in contemporary chamber music, form the basis of her expressive musicianship. In dramaturgically captivating programmes, she takes her listeners on unpredictable adventures.’ And with this line of command Ms Levin is known to fit like raw silk, into the continuum of Polish school and Walter Gieseking (via Marian Filar), and Rudolf Serkin and Artur Schnabel (via Leonard Shure).

In other words, Ms Levin is cut like a diamond in the rough, along the finest in the business. Her disc, Blackbird & Ancestors [Aldilá Records] is further proof of this fact. Listening to it over and over again is like dancing with genius. The quality of her playing here is altogether exceptional and I am not sure why she is not better-known than she already is.

The pianist takes nothing for granted. Like putting together, a  programme such as a volcanic mix of Mozart’s tragic Sonata K310 with Schubert’s Elysian late Sonata in G minor with the exquisite and mysteriously mystic 5 Klavierstücke Op 2 No 1a [parts i-v]  by Heinz Tiessen (1887-1971), separating the two part to make up one of the most eloquent parts of an architectural masterpiece.

For her past several offerings Ms Levin has combined works that miss her esteemed mindset, a worldview that entices us to place where wonderful revelations abound. Ms Levis dazzles us with her stern and quite brilliant genius. She makes all of this shine as she traverses her way through glinting lights, mysterious depths, expectations, frustrations, hopes and doubts, like the shattered shadows of an often sinister, but beautiful quasi-Mendelssohnian scherzo, glimpsed by moonlight in a deep forest.

In sheer colour and variety, in the depth of its characterisation and the exceptional range and refinement of its pianism – that is connecting the stern Mozart through the Tiessen and then the numinous – Ms Levin imparts here a power and exquisite structure to the shape and scope of these works a ‘bigness’ that most musicians have not been able to achieve.

In the variety and stylishness of these works the pianist brings  effortless grace, lyricism, urbanity and intellect. All of this is as seductive as it is as persuasive as an object lesson in seductive elegance and style. The pioneering work on the Tiessen – performed after an epic 108 years or so – is played with buoyant, aristocratic grace and almost insolently effortless majesty, brings to it a debonair virtuosity and swagger that is absolutely missing to pianism these days.

The ravishing beauty of the whole performance is commanding and absolutely magnificent. All in all, a world of piano styles evoked as few could even hope to try. Bravi Ms Levin.

Deo Gratis…

Music – 1. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Sonata K310 No. 1 [I – iii]; 2. Tiessen 5 Klavierstücke Op 2 No 1a [i-v]; 3. Schubert Sonata D 894 [i – iv].

Musicians – Beth Levin: piano.

Released: 2025
Label:  Aldilá Records.
A. I. Records
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