YOAV LEVANON AND MICHAEL SANDERLING'S STYLISH AND POETIC LISZT
February 10, 2025 by Benedict Hévry
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Franz Liszt (1811-1886): Piano Concerto No. 1 in E flat major S.124 and Concerto No. 2 in A major, S. 125. Totentanz S.126.Yoav Levanon, piano. Luzerner Sinfonieorchester, conductor: Michael Sanderling. 1 CD Warner Classics. Presentation notein English, French and German. Recorded at KKL Luzern (Switzerland) on the sidelines of the “Le Piano Symphonique”festival from January 17 to 20, 2024. Duration: 56:08
Warner Classics
Yoav Levanon, in the company of the Luzerner Sinfonieorchester, admirably conducted by Michael Sanderling , renews our vision of the two concerti and the impressive Totentanz by Franz Liszt.
Yoav Levanon, the phenomenal young Israeli pianist barely twenty years old, already has a long career behind him. A very young prodigy, he was recently noticed internationally after his solo performance at the “Piano Summit” at Schloss Elmau (2024), dubbed by Martha Argerich , but also during his first recitals in France (at the Pianos aux Jacobins in Toulouse in 2020 or at Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris in 2023 ); and for having been “signed” by Warner Classics, with whom he already has two recital albums to his credit.
For his first concert recording, he chose Liszt and took up the coupling – the two concerti and in addition the formidable Totentanz – classic since the legendary microgroove of Alfred Brendel in the company of Bernard Haitink (Decca, ex-Philips), illustrated since by other tandems (let us cite for example, the peremptory constructions of Zimerman/Ozawa(DGG), the slightly superficial brilliance of Thibaudet/Dutoit (Decca), or the very deep and almost alchemical original vision of Beatrice Berrut in the company of Julien Masmondet for her album Athanor (Aparté).
The glamorous cover photo plays on the somewhat heavy-handed cliché of a vaporous "romanticism", and the laconic presentation text of the artist, with its somewhat hackneyed clichés, ignores the complex genesis or even the probable sources of artistic or literary inspiration for his works (such as the frescoes of the Triumph of Death by Bonamico Buffalmacco in the Campo Santo in Pisa for the Totentanz). This recording, we also learn, is a studio capture on the sidelines of the 2024 edition of the Lucerne "Piano Symphonique" festival: Levanon therefore rightly pays a brief but vibrant tribute to his local partners and to the "precise and thoughtful" (sic!) direction of Michael Sanderling , with whom the understanding was audibly exemplary during the four days of sessions.
It is true that the orchestra and conductor respond wonderfully to the soloist's rather singular options, both in the most stormy lines of the Totentanz admirably structured in the varied sequence of evocations of the Gregorian Dies Irae – and in the rapid and playful exchanges of Concerto No. 1 (allegro vivace ), or the more thoughtful ones of Concerto No. 2. The soloist also establishes elsewhere, with the benevolent complicity of the conductor, an authentic dialogue and an almost chamber-like atmosphere – here with the clarinet of Stojan Krkuleski (first concerto), there with the cello of Heiner Reich (allegro moderato of the second concerto) – at the whim of the most serenely intimate passages.
These very personal interpretations are all splendid successes. Yoav Levanon , of a confounding maturity, from the beginning of Concerto No. 1 asserts himself by letting the chords resonate widely, without ever playing the card of peremptory or demonstrative bluff. The finales of the two works are intended to be brilliant, virtuoso, without being disheveled, extremely musical by the clever dosage of effects and colors. But, beyond a delicious illumination of the polyphony, and a very controlled sonority, there is here an exceptional interpreter, a stylist to his fingertips, and a perfect connoisseur of this "generation of 1810": the quasi adagio of the first concerto rightly looks towards Chopin's nocturnes, and the whole introduction of the second, of a very dark water in its candied and uncertain climate, seems to recall the Schumannian torments of the Nachtstücke.
Certainly one can prefer more uniformly volcanic interpretations of the two concerti (Argerich/Abbado for the first at DGG, Richter/Kondrashin at Decca for both) or even more "infernal" of the Totentanz (the indomitable tandem Nelson Freire/Rudolf Kempe at Sony). But for the dialogic involvement of the performers, for the intelligent direction of Michael Sanderling and even more for the very chastened but never mawkish or affected playing of Yoav Levanon, decidedly an exciting pianist-poet of the very young generation, this disc is to be marked with a white stone.
.It should be noted that while we may regret the relative brevity of this album (we would have so much liked to have heard the Hungarian Fantasy or the Lisztian adaptation of the Wanderer-fantasie ..) added to it, its dematerialized edition offers as encores, a little more applied, the romance O Pourquoi donc S.169, the Frühlingsnacht S.568 after Schumann's Liederkreis op.39 and a paraphrase by Levanon himself (Silent love alla Liszt), this time a somewhat obvious and superfluous sugar cube.
In conclusion, an approach, certainly virtuoso and technically very assumed, but above all stylish and poetic, even at times almost chamber music in its dialogical conception.
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Franz Liszt (1811-1886): Piano Concerto No. 1 in E flat major S.124 and Concerto No. 2 in A major, S. 125. Totentanz S.126.Yoav Levanon, piano. Luzerner Sinfonieorchester, conductor: Michael Sanderling. 1 CD Warner Classics. Presentation notein English, French and German. Recorded at KKL Luzern (Switzerland) on the sidelines of the “Le Piano Symphonique”festival from January 17 to 20, 2024. Duration: 56:08
Warner Classics