People Are Talking: UMS presents Ryoji Ikeda’s...
Posted: 10/31/14
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All comments by Richard Needleman
People Are Talking: UMS presents Igor Levit, piano:
By far the worst performance of a Bach partita I have ever heard. Sounded more like a Chopin Nocturne. Pretentious and too slow–it’s supposed to be dance music. Tempos uncertain and strange. As for the Schubert, I never realized that Bach and Schubert were the same person.
One does not have to be a purist to find fault. Turreck gives a wonderful classical performance and Pinnock another on the harpsichord. I don’t know whether Richter has ever recorded the partita, but his WTC is–like Levitt’s playing–very non-tranditonal. However, Richter gives an imaginative performance which while probably far from what Bach sounded like originally, is intellectually imaginative and emotionally ingaging. So I am not criticizing from the viewpoint of the original performance narrative…..