There must be something in the air. Ursula Oppens, who premiered Frederic Rzewski’s The People United Will Never Be Defeated at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in 1976, has performed the piece twice in New York City in the last six months, and still with aplomb. On 22 January at Carnegie Hall, the Russian-born pianist Igor Levit included Rzewski’s set of variations on a Chilean alongside Beethoven in a night of dramatic heights.
Beethoven’s Thirty-three variations on a waltz by Diabelli occupied the first half of the program. Hunched over in focused concentration, Levit introduced the theme at such a clip that one couldn't help but worry about the marathon of musculature he had in front of him. He was in a near constant roll, from sitting erect to forehead nearly on the keys, while playing with a precision that was almost alarming. The step into Variation 14: Grave e maestoso, the first slow section, was particularly stunning; articulate and pristine, it warmed the large white and gold room before ramping up again to more bright rolls and concentric circles.
It was an inspired pairing of works, both endlessly inventive, equally exhilarating and exhaustive in their individual explorations. But more importantly, both are intent on purpose and dramatically sweeping in their realizations. They are each extensive re-workings of existing melodies, but each with its own arc, each standing as an episodic but virtuosic whole.
For the Rzewski, Levit played from a score, and with all the stridency and delicacy of the Diabelli. He seemed again to revel in accentuating the dynamics: the forte was forte; the pianissimo hung like lace. But in Rzewski’s variations, the shifts seemed to serve the greater purpose all the better. Rzewski is more beholden to his musical theme than is Beethoven, not exactly repeating it but continuously restating it. The theme comes from a folk song written around 1970, during the presidency of socialist leader Salvador Allende. Those who attended the premiere of Rzewski’s realization during a Bi-Centennial Piano Series in Washington, DC must have sensed a more universal appeal.
It's a sort of hyper-minimalist work, moving quickly through rich passages of repetition and variation. Levit took slow sections at about half a snail’s pace, locking into one recapitulation and then sinking into another. If the composition is a musical documentary of revolution in Chile, Levit’s rendering was a dramatic fictionalization exaggerated to convey the spirit of the people and the perils of their story. Occasional yelps and whistles, slapping of the piano case and rhythmic stomping conjured images of marching masses in the streets. Occasional pregnant pauses separated the scenes and sustain pedaling that seemed somehow volatile and tempestuous heightened the tension.
Levitt has said that The People United is in a class with the Diabellis and the Goldberg Variations (he included all three on a 2015 release). Over the course of 69 variations at Carnegie Hall, he offered a more than convincing argument.
