Latest news with #IgorLevit
Times
05-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Seong-Jin Cho review — a fabulous feast of Ravel
It has been a busy couple of weeks for marathons in London. A few days before runners took to the tarmac, the pianist Igor Levit took on Erik Satie's Vexations — a short piece to be performed 840 times. At the Barbican in London on Friday, Seong-Jin Cho played the complete solo piano works of another French musical adventurer, Maurice Ravel. Levit's performance ran for 13 hours; Cho's lasted three, with two intervals. But given the demands of Ravel's music, physical and mental — an increasingly sweaty Cho played entirely from memory — the 'Ravel-athon' may have been the more extreme endurance event. Cho has also been touring the programme internationally since January. Running through the pieces chronologically, the concert faithfully followed the recording Cho
Spectator
03-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Spectator
Igor Levit's 12-hour performance of Satie's Vexations was far too short
So, in the end, it was long but not that long. Twelve hours, compared to the 20 hours-plus many of us had been anticipating. The fastest on record? Very possibly. Igor Levit had started Satie's Vexations at just after 10am on Thursday 24 April, and completed repeat number 840 of this niggly little bastard of a phrase around 10.30pm, preventing any kind of mass sleepover at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. No screens were required in the end either – screens that the Guardian had reported were scheduled to appear around the pianist to hide his modesty when the toilet beckoned. (The logistics of this seemed ambitious.) Instead whenever Levit decided it was time for a loo break he simply walked off stage. In the end there was also no need to get too irritated at Marina Abramovic for her conceptual interventions, as it wasn't these that spoiled the performance. What did spoil the performance was something more fundamental.
The Guardian
01-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
A meth-fuelled Erik Satie marathon in swinging 60s London
To perform Erik Satie's piano piece Vexations, with its 840 repetitions, is an amazing achievement, but neither Igor Levit nor Ruth Davis was the first to do so in the UK ('It is trance-like': pianist Igor Levit performs Erik Satie's Vexations 840 times, 24 April). On 10 October 1967, Richard Toop performed it at the Arts Lab in Drury Lane, London. He gave an account of this to Gavin Bryars that was published in Contact magazine in 1983, and later quoted in David Curtis's 2020 book London's Arts Labs and the 60s Avant-Garde. 'Three things stand out in my mind from the performance,' Toop told Bryars. 'Firstly, the piano was in the outer foyer, where there was an art exhibition, so that the music became a real musique d'ameublement. People walked round the piano, talked, and sometimes stopped and listened … Secondly, I remember a man from the Times kneeling beside me as I played … not even Rubinstein got that kind of genuflectory treatment. 'The third aspect was less fortunate; after about 16 hours I asked for some kind of mild stimulant in addition to the strong coffee I had been getting … what actually materialised was a cup of coffee with (as I only discovered later) a whole phial of methedrine [methamphetamine] in it. 'The effect was hair-raising: my drooping eyelids rolled up like a Tom and Jerry cartoon … The trouble was that my field of vision became completely fixed; each time I got to the end of the page I had to lift my head up and realign my vision on to the beginning of the new page.'Biddy PeppinCastle Cary, Somerset Have an opinion on anything you've read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.
Times
25-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Vexations review — Igor Levit's magnificent musical marathon
Is Erik Satie's Vexations an avant-garde work of genius, a practical joke, or the classical music equivalent of watching paint dry? The composer — whose works also include True Flabby Preludes (for a Dog) — wrote the piece in 1893 after his heart had been shredded by his girlfriend, with the deadpan instruction that it should be performed a mind-addling 840 times. If ever there was a pianist born to investigate the work, billed to run for a minimum of 16 hours at the Southbank Centre's Queen Elizabeth Hall, it was the intellectually restless, artistically uncompromising Igor Levit. On Thursday morning I joined the crowd — 150 of us had committed to go the whole distance, while more lightweight (or sane?) enthusiasts opted for bitesize
The Guardian
24-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘It is trance-like': pianist Igor Levit performs Erik Satie's Vexations 840 times
Given that he was about to start playing the same piano piece 840 times, for no less than 16 unbroken hours, you could have forgiven Igor Levit for appearing panicked as he walked on stage at London's Queen Elizabeth Hall on Thursday morning. But the German pianist, who this morning began a marathon concert in which he would play Erik Satie's Vexations to hundreds of people for hours on end, simply arranged his sheet music, gave a little laugh – maybe at the absurdity of what he had signed up for – and began to play. About 150 people had paid to stay for the duration of the marathon performance, which is a collaboration between Levit and the Serbian conceptual artist Marina Abramović. It is thought to be the first time the piece will be played in its entirety by the same person live in the UK. Others opted to pop in for hour-long sessions throughout the day and into the evening, with the last slot beginning at 11pm and lasting until the bitter end. Jacob Povey, a 29-year-old nurse, was in it for the long haul. 'It's such a unique, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,' he said as he waited for doors to open. 'I've managed five hours before at Christian Marclay's film installation, The Clock, so I know I've got something like that in me. I'll be in and out, but hopefully I'm here at the end … whenever it does actually end.' Written in 1893 for keyboard, Vexations is between one and two minutes long when played once. But a note from Satie on the manuscript – 'In order to play this motif 840 times in a row, it would be advisable to prepare oneself beforehand, in the deepest silence, through serious immobilities' – has inspired several artists throughout the years to attempt just that. A marathon performance of the piece in 1963, organised by John Cage and played in shifts by various pianists, including Christian Wolff, lasted 19 hours and was called 'musical history' by the New York Times. Levit, whose first performance of the piece was streamed from his Berlin apartment during the Covid-19 lockdown, has done it before in 15 and a half hours. For many visiting, it was less about the music and more about the performance, which featured pieces of the modular stage being taken apart and turned into sculptural chairs. 'One of the things that struck me was how unmemorable that piece of music was,' said Dave Hallberry, 69, who had come along to the performance with his wife, Noreen, and 18-year-old daughter, Sorcha. 'Even now, I don't think I could sing it to you and I've just been listening to it for an hour. There's something about the combination of notes that makes you want to keep listening to it.' Abramović worked with the lighting designer Urs Schönebaum to create a mirror-like effect above the piano. 'I kept switching my view between the mirror and the stage,' said Clare Maleeny, a 24-year-old film editor. 'It was trance-like.' Ruth Davis, a 69-year-old Alexander teacher, was more familiar with the piece than most. 'They said it was the first time that it's been played live in the UK,' she said. 'Which is not true: I played this piece in front of an audience in 1983 for my second-year performance at Leicester Polytechnic and it lasted 11 hours and 43 minutes. I starved myself for two days before. It's really quite a difficult piece to play!' Luckily, Levit had two onstage helpers nearby to provide him with sustenance and mop his brow. And as for the key question on everyone's mind – how he went to the toilet – a screen was on standby to go up around the piano. Many, though, worried about his comfort and wondered whether he'd go the distance. 'The chair wasn't great,' said Hallberry. 'I thought he'd have some sort of comfy office chair or something.' Speaking to the Guardian earlier this year, Abramović said the chair can turn into a bed, 'so that he can lie next to the piano for 10 or 15 minutes if he needs to'. For the audience, as much as for Levit, it will be a test of endurance. 'I will have to leave for toilet break and eating and so on,' said Nick Manrique, a 26-year-old PhD student. 'But I'm stubborn – I'm quite determined to see it through.' Tickets for Igor Levit's performance of Vexations are still available, and can be bought at the Southbank Centre box office.
