Percussive Prokofiev and titanic Shostakovich from Igor Levit and Lukas Sternath

This Wigmore Hall recital could well have been subtitled “Igor Levit presents”. Young Viennese pianist Lukas Sternath has been mentored by Levit since 2022, the year he swept the board at the ARD Competition in Munich. On the evidence here, he’s clearly a remarkable talent and Levit is clearly proud of his protégé, sharing a programme where each performed a Prokofiev piano sonata before joining forces for Shostakovich’s own transcription of his Tenth Symphony. 

Igor Levit breathes this music, delighting in moments of (re)discovery as Prokofiev’s Ninth Sonata unfolded, or almost standing to crunch powerful chords into the Shostakovich. He wears his heart on his sleeve. When the bright ping of a mobile phone notification coincided with the chiming Andante tranquillo section of the Prokofiev, Levit’s face creased into a smile. When a cacophony of coughs spluttered between movements of the symphony, he turned to his iPad page-turner and wryly nodded his approval. There were approving nods at his partner in the Shostakovich too; a frown, a quizzically raised eyebrow, a beaming grin as their eyes met across their pianos. 

Pianos? Yes, plural, nested together, a keyboard at either side of the platform. Shostakovich’s transcription, made shortly after finishing the symphony, was for piano four-hands (i.e. a single piano). He performed it in Leningrad with his friend and colleague Mieczysław Weinberg at the apartment of Evgeny Mravinsky, who was to conduct the 1953 premiere. They later recorded it, a quite astonishing document. Weinberg later recalled, “I played the right-hand part, Dmitri Dmitriyevich always sat to my left.” But an additional piano here, though not strictly necessary, did allow for a greater sense of theatre and it meant both sides of the hall had a view of a keyboard! 

Levit took on Shostakovich’s “left hand” role, providing the cello and double bass pulse, a sturdy foundation along with an occasional comic role, such as the chuntering bassoon that parps in the finale. In Weinberg’s role, Sternath took most of the melodic glory, along with puckish woodwind imitations and steely trills. No piano is ever going to replicate the poignant horn solo in the third movement’s “Elmira” motif no matter how much pedal is used, but Levit and Sternath made the best possible case for the transcription, even if not every attack was perfectly unified. They spurred each other on in a ferocious second movement and unleashed a pulsating coda, Shostakovich’s D-S-C-H monogram thumped out with glee, greeted by audience roars. 

In recent weeks, Levit has played an awful lot of Prokofiev, with complete cycles of the five concertos with the Budapest Festival Orchestra in Budapest, Vienna and Heidelberg. The C major Ninth Sonata sounds misleadingly simple, a very different beast to the three aggressive “war sonatas” 6, 7 and 8. It was composed for Sviatoslav Richter, who welcomed its intimacy: “It is a domestic sonata – the more you hear it, the more you come to love it and feel its magnetism.” It may lack immediate appeal, but Levit emphasised its introspective side, its pastel shades, and dispatched the finale buoyantly.  

With Prokofiev’s militaristic Seventh Sonata (also premiered by Richter), Sternath had the easier “sell”. It stresses the percussive nature of the piano and Sternath, playing crisply, drilled the fast-repeated notes with precision. He was dynamically sensitive in the Andante caloroso central movement, where bells seem to toll distantly. The Precipitato finale is a real finger-cruncher, a mechanical toccata in 7/8, but huge credit to Sternath for not treating it like an Olympic sprint and finding the music in its densely clustered nine pages. Levit’s pride is well-founded.