FOREVER BACH
Daniel Levy’s Vision of Bach
In this special selection of music by Johann Sebastian Bach, we are delighted to share part of a recording of Book I of the Well-Tempered Clavier by the pianist Daniel Levy in Ossiach (Austria) and some of the ‘live concerts’ that have taken place within the 9th edition of the Ascona Music Festival during May/June of 2018.
His sublime music has always been present in my work from a very young age, with his Inventions for two and three voices, and his preludes and fugues, communicating a universe full of imagination, fantasy and perfect form. Parallel voices that express the polyphony of the human and divine at the same time. For decades, in my experience, it has been a balm for the soul, the harmonizer of our world full of noise and interference. Bach does not enter the spectacle of the music industry. He is ancient, classic, contemporary and of the unknown future. He will always be in its firmament, giving its light. Expressing his music, not interpreting it, is openness of the mind, intervention of the spirit and a cure for all the psyches that invade without asking permission. A great banisher of everything banal, of that which is low and meaningless. There is no work, however small, that does not have everything needed to be an example of greatness, purity and austere genius. He is the most expressive of the romantics and the deep Pythagoreanism present in his work, a powerful emblem of the function of Music that the sage of Samos transmitted to the artist of Eisenach.
It is with the conviction of its unique role in the coexistence of the great musicians, that I share with those who love Bach, the Well-Tempered Clavier (Book I), a sonata for violin and keyboard, and four of its seven concerts for harpsichord and orchestra.
Daniel Levy
It is a relatively rare pianist that can convince, and beguile, as expertly in the disciplined contrapuntal explorations of Bach as in the atmospheric musings of Liszt, the highly colored textural fantasy of Scriabin, and the imaginative genre portraits of Schumann’s songs and melodramas, but Levy triumphantly succeeds in doing so. It would be just, in responding to his two-disc traversal of The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1, to point to the precision of his rhythm in the C-minor Fugue, to his expert balancing of the two hands in the D-major Prelude and his unusually subtle application of the over-dotting convention in its companion Fugue, to the richly evocative color his left hand brings to the E-minor Prelude, to the incisively decided character of his A-minor Prelude and Fugue. These and many other similar observations can be made, and made accurately–but it is the poetry of his whole conception that is most important. This is romantic Bach, though only in the sense that all worthwhile music-making is romantic.
Levy’s performance speaks of the human condition, and what it says both expresses and elicits deep feeling.
BERNARD JACOBSON
Read about Daniel Levy, and you will soon discover that he is an exponent of “the Vincenzo Scaramuzza School”. This seems to stand less for a particular style of playing than, as Rosanna Consentino has described, “an accurate study of the anatomy of the pianist, [allowing] a complete relaxation of the muscles and tendons of the hands and arms, even when the pianist performs the most difficult pieces of music.” The result she also describes is a smooth, unforced and non-metallic sound, though as Martha Argerich was also taught by Scaramuzza, this doesn’t have to result in low-powered musicianship.
Daniel Levy’s approach in Bach is certainly individual enough to make it stand out. His playing has a magical quality at distance, and this is certainly a beautifully made recording.
Levy’s playing is superbly expressive for the most part, and I relish his voicing in the fugues.
Daniel Levy has a skilful way of delivering contrasts of flavour and texture, giving a crisp touch as often as he creates languid pools of delicious softness.
You’ll get the drift if I say this is a richer WTC Ithan Angela Hewitt, but without being cloying. Hewitt is more intimate and does more with subtle dynamics, shaping phrasing with a more linear character where
Levy is more vertical. You can hear this in the Fugue in C sharp major, chosen almost at random, where Hewitt’s conversational voices weave and interact, each given a highly distinctive character. Partly a consequence of the more resonant recording but also due to Levy’s more spiky handling of the theme, extra accents and stronger presentation of secondary themes mean the musical argument has less linear character but does have greater punch. His most magical moments are where the tempi flow from a source seemingly other than that which we draw on in our own humdrum universe. The Prelude and fugue in C sharp minor are both cases in point, the slow development of the fugue in particular giving the sense of time standing still.
Levy’s slowness is a different kind to that of Glenn Gould: for instance introducing a lyrical character to the undulating accompaniment to the opening of the Prelude in E minor, and then using this equality of purpose to make the second half to echo the earlier Prelude in C minor.
The recording for this release is very good, the acoustic resonant but not too boomy.
He is never dull, and his is a voice which deserves hearing.
DOMINY CLEMENTS
FOREVER BACH: PRELUDES AND FUGUES
A selection of Preludes and Fugues from the album
The Well-Tempered Clavier Book I
DANIEL LEVY, piano
BACH: KEYBOARD CONCERTO IN D MAJOR BWV 1054
In Collaboration with the ASCONA MUSIC FESTIVAL (Live recording)
DANIEL LEVY, piano
Camerata dei Castelli
https://youtu.be/mY-gaU7JzQwhttps://youtu.be/bP83OwXoKX4
BACH: KEYBOARD CONCERTO IN G MINOR BWV 1058
In Collaboration with the ASCONA MUSIC FESTIVAL (Live recording)
DANIEL LEVY, piano
Camerata dei Castelli
BACH: KEYBOARD CONCERTO IN F MINOR BWV 1056
In Collaboration with the ASCONA MUSIC FESTIVAL (Live recording)
DANIEL LEVY, piano
Camerata dei Castelli
https://youtu.be/blsYiuh9v84https://youtu.be/O5DCQObY-HI
BACH: KEYBOARD CONCERTO IN D MINOR
BWV 1052
In Collaboration with the ASCONA MUSIC FESTIVAL (Live recording)
DANIEL LEVY, piano
Camerata dei Castelli
BACH: SONATA No. 1 FOR VIOLIN AND KEYBOARD IN B MINOR BWV 1014
In Collaboration with the ASCONA MUSIC FESTIVAL (Live recording)
ROBERT ZIMANSKY, violin
DANIEL LEVY, piano
https://youtu.be/2iZ7z74PomAhttps:/https://youtu.be/ZAww9Er1Jak
