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Published: Friday, 20 December 2024 at 13:50 PM

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Liszt
Piano Concertos Nos 1 & 2; Totentanz
Yoav Levanon (piano); Luzerner Sinfonieorchester/Michael Sanderling
Warner Classics 2173242397   64:46 mins 

Clip: Liszt: Romance, S. 169 ‘O pourquoi donc’ (Yoav Levanon)

Yoav Levanon goes all in with Liszt for his first concerto album, recorded as part of the 2024 KlavierFestival ‘Le piano symphonique’ in Lucerne. The 20-year-old Israeli-French pianist is one of the latest generation of pianists who can generate remarkable amounts of sound from a keyboard, and boy does he unleash demons in Liszt’s First Piano Concerto.

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Thunderous, grandioso chords, splendid double octaves, dramatic flourishes, a theatrical spirit and passionate melody means the first movement is over in a flash. A Beethovenian spirit lingers in the Quasi Adagio, which moves from hymn to nocturne to tempest. Levanon is all quicksilver in the third movement, with its precise silvery triangle, and he has the requisite rhythmic attack of the Allegro marziale animato, giving us a thrilling race to the end.

If the second concerto begins more sedately and serenely, with room for Levanon to show off sparkling playing, intertwined with soloists from the orchestra, we’re soon back in tumultuous territory, which everyone involved relishes. The duetting between solo cello (and later oboe and flute) and piano in the Allegro moderato is beautiful and offers much needed respite before the drama ratchets up again. There’s more space in this concerto for the orchestra to shine too, but Levanon doesn’t yet give us the sense of overall architecture.

All signs of Lisztian restraint are ditched in a Totentanz that’s almost cartoonish in its devilishness and exhausting in its relentlessness, but Levanon has fun with it. Three solo pieces offer welcome respite at the end of an intense programme. Rebecca Franks

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