{"product_id":"igor-levit-tristan-cd","title":"IGOR LEVIT - Tristan | CD","description":"\u003cp\u003eOn the double album \"Tristan\" by Igor Levit, to be released on Sony Classical on September 9, 2022, the pianist explores the nocturnal themes of love and death, fear, ecstasy, loneliness, and redemption in the music of Richard Wagner, Franz Liszt, Gustav Mahler, and Hans Werner Henze. It includes the recording of Levit's first concerto with the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig under the direction of Franz Welser-Möst, with the central work of the album, Henze's \"Tristan\" for piano, electronic tapes, and orchestra. The five works, including Liszt's \"Liebestraum no. 3\" and \"Harmonies du Soir,\" as well as transcriptions of Wagner's \"Prelude to Tristan und Isolde\" and Mahler's \"Adagio from Symphony no. 10,\" span a period of 135 years (1837 to 1973) and represent very different genres. Only one of these works was originally conceived for solo piano, but Igor Levit's exploration of the boundary experiences of our lives — death in Life (2018), spirituality in Encounter (2020), and now, with Tristan, the link between love, death, and our need for redemption — inevitably means that it is not only piano masterpieces that are at the heart of his concerns, but above all compositions in which certain thematic associations find their most personal expression. Levit's own thoughts revolve less around the themes of love and death as such than around the experience of night and the night as a dark alternative to our conscious actions during the day. \"Night has so many faces. It can indicate a place of refuge or a loss of control, it signifies love and death, and it's the place where we feel our deepest, most paranoid fears,\" explains Levit. \"Mahler's Adagio from the Tenth Symphony contains a famous outburst of pain in the form of a dissonant chord, and Wagner's Tristan und Isolde speaks of a kind of emotional nuclear fusion. All essential actions in the piece take place at night. In his memoirs, Hans Werner Henze also referred to his work on Tristan as a period of nightmares and dream-like hallucinations.\" Hans Werner Henze's Tristan, described by the composer as a set of \"Preludes for piano, tape and orchestra,\" is a highly refined hybrid work comprising passages for solo piano and electronics, being at once a concerto, a symphony, and a piece of musical theater. The present recording of this work was made during concerts that took place in Leipzig in November 2019. Liszt's Nocturne in A-flat major, his Liebestraum no. 3, is inspired by a setting of melancholy lines by Ferdinand Freiligrath: \"Oh, love as long as you can love! \/Oh, love as long as you want to! \/The hour is fast approaching when\/You will rise and weep by the grave!\" The same feeling of nocturnal despair is also found in Mahler, who, in late July 1910, was working on the first movement of his Tenth Symphony when he discovered his wife was having an affair. Igor Levit performs this Adagio in a little-known piano transcription by the Scottish composer Ronald Stevenson, whose great Passacaglia on DSCH he has recently done so much to promote. It is only in Harmonies du soir, the eleventh of Liszt's twelve Études d'exécution transcendante, that one finds a sense of reconciliation, a peaceful counterweight to the ecstasies and nightmares experienced by these Wagnerian and Mahlerian figures who, in Wagner's own words, are \"devoted to the night.\"\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Sony Music Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":59395704750414,"sku":"0194399434826","price":15.98,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0917\/0357\/4862\/files\/Cover_Tristan.jpg?v=1775144996","url":"https:\/\/store.sonymusic.fr\/en\/products\/igor-levit-tristan-cd","provider":"Sony Music Store","version":"1.0","type":"link"}