Pianist Igor Levit has released a new album as his personal artistic reaction to the October 7 attacks on Israel, and to the current rise in anti-Semitism worldwide.
The album contains a selection of Felix Mendelssohn‘s solo piano cycle ‘Songs without Words’ and concludes with a Prelude by the French Romantic composer Charles-Valentin Alkan. Proceeds from the album will be donated to two German organisations fighting anti-Semitism – the OFEK Advice Center for Anti-Semitic Violence and Discrimination, and the Kreuzberg Initiative Against Anti-Semitism.
Igor Levit explains, ‘I made this recording out of a very, very strong inner necessity. I spent the first four or five weeks after the attack on October 7 in a mixture of speechlessness and total paralysis.
‘And at some point, it became clear that I had no other tools than to react as an artist. I have the piano. I have my music. And so, the idea came to me to record these works, the ‘Songs without Words’ and to donate my proceeds from this recording to two wonderful organizations that work in my hometown here in Berlin to help people who experience anti-Semitism and to help young people avoid falling into the clutches of anti-Semitism.
‘It is my artistic reaction, as a person, as a musician, as a Jew, to what I have felt in the last few weeks and months. Or to put it more precisely, it is one of many reactions that came to mind.’
Igor Levit has recently spoken about the rise in anti-Semitism in the German media, and discussed its impact on Jews today with the German vice-chancellor Robert Habeck, on the 85th anniversary of Pogrom Night (Kristallnacht).
In November, Levit also travelled to Tel Aviv to play for the families of Israeli hostages and most recently organised a solidarity concert with many prominent German musicians, authors and presenters, as well as Holocaust survivor Margot Friedländer.
The choice of repertoire for the album felt right for Levit, who has played many of Mendelssohn’s ‘Songs without Words’ privately and cites that a ‘certain melancholy’ to the works has given him some solace in recent times. He considers Alkan’s Prélude Op.31: No. 8 ‘La chanson de la folle au bord de la mer’ as a kind of ‘Song without Words’ and an intuitive conclusion to the recording.
The striking cover image was taken by photographer Markus Hurek and shows the necklace gifted to Igor Levit some years ago, with an original representation of the Star of David.
Mendelssohn – Songs without Words is released digitally worldwide on Sony Classical.