arts&life
music
Tickling Ivory
It’s Gilmore Keyboard Festival time
— meet two of this year’s stars.
SUZANNE CHESSLER CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Igor Levit
PHOTO BY GREGOR HOHENBERG
details
Igor Levit will perform after
a pre-concert talk at
1 p.m. Wednesday, May 9, at
Stetson Chapel, Kalamazoo.
$30.
Emmet Cohen will perform
at noon Monday, May 7,
at the Civic Auditorium
in Kalamazoo and noon
Tuesday, May 8, at the W.K.
Kellogg Foundation,
Battle Creek. $15.
Leon Fleisher will perform
at 8 p.m. Wednesday, May
9, in Chenery Auditorium,
Kalamazoo.
$18-$38.
For more information on
these and other concerts, go
to thegilmore.org or call
(269) 342-1166.
64
April 19 • 2018
J
ust after performing a pow-
erful concert in London,
classical pianist Igor Levit
received some powerful news:
He was the 2018 winner of the
Gilmore Artist Award. The prize?
An impressive $300,000 in recog-
nition of his piano talents.
The award, conferred every
four years during the bien-
nial Kalamazoo-based Gilmore
Keyboard Festival — which
brings together international
keyboard stars of different
genres — is decided through a
noncompetitive process by an
anonymous six-member Artistic
Advisory Committee appraising
worldwide nominees unaware
they are even under consider-
ation. It is often compared to
“genius grants” awarded by the
MacArthur Foundation.
Levit had already planned
to perform at this year’s event,
which runs April 25-May 12.
“Gilmore means a lot to me,”
says Levit, undecided about
what he will do with the grant
money. “I’ve performed in an
earlier Gilmore program and in
Ann Arbor, and I have beautiful
jn
“I feel strongly about playing music
that is full of life while still letting
other emotions come through, wheth-
er sadness, anguish, anger or uncer-
tainty.” — EMMET COHEN
memories of Michigan.
“The award has not affected
the choice of what I will play. I
wanted to play something very
special and unique, and there’s
no doubt that the Goldberg
Variations fulfill all that as one of
those iconic and incomparable
works of music.”
With concerts throughout
Western Michigan, the festival
also will celebrate milestones
— the 100th anniversary of the
late composer-conductor-pianist
Leonard Bernstein’s birth and
the 90th birthday of pianist Leon
Fleisher, who will be featured
playing a Mozart concerto.
Levit, 31, was born in Russia
and took to the piano by the
time he was 4.
“After I happened to touch the
piano and started playing it, I
never stopped,” says the artist,
who listened to his mother as
she sat at the keyboard. “There
hasn’t been a great deal of deci-
sion making. It was a natural way
of doing things. Whatever music
I wanted to play, I played.”
Levit, who lives in Berlin, was
8 when his family moved to
Germany. He graduated from
the Hanover University of Music,
Drama and Media with the high-
est score in the history of the
institute. As the youngest 2005
participant at the International
Arthur Rubinstein Competition
in Tel Aviv, he won the Silver
Medal, the Special Prize for
Chamber Music, the Audience
Award and the Special Prize
for the Best Performance of the
Contemporary Requiem.
“I have been to Israel very
often,” says Levit, who identi-
fies as culturally Jewish. “After
the Rubinstein competition, I
wanted to go back. I very much
like being there.”
Levit’s performance schedule
keeps him traveling to great
orchestras, including the San
Francisco Symphony Orchestra,
the Danish National Symphony
Orchestra and the Tonhalle
Orchestra Zurich. In 2015, Sony
Classical released his third solo
album featuring Bach’s Goldberg
Variations, Beethoven’s Diabelli
Variations and Rzewski’s The
People United Will Never Be
Defeated!; the album was chosen
the Recording of the Year and
given the Instrumental Award at
the 2016 Gramophone Classical
Music Awards.
“Whenever I do not have
to travel for concerts, I still
travel,” says Levit, who is single.
“Traveling is the thing I like to do
most.”
Wherever he goes, Levit stays