Fantasia is the latest report from the front lines of Igor Levit’s continuing saga of self-exploration and revelation that began with 2018’s Life and continued with 2020’s Encounter.

Here, as the title might suggest, Levit takes a deeper plunge into matters of the imagination and invention in a set spanning two discs and ranging from Bach and Liszt (with a glancing aside towards Schubert) to Berg and Busoni. 

It’s quite the stretch. An expanse that Levit traverses with characteristically insightful aplomb, ever the assured guide on these concept-led recitals. More than mere guide, in fact, as Levit variously adopts the guise of ringmaster and showman, prophet, poet and provocateur in a superbly realised program traversing four of the piano repertoire’s highest peaks. To each he tempers interrogation with insight while matching bone-shaking drama with cut-crystal poetry to deliver one of the year’s most stimulating and satisfying recitals.
The starting point and fulcrum of this rewarding program, as Eleonore Büning remarks in her excellent booklet notes, is Busoni’s Fantasia...