The multi-award-winning pianist Igor Levit is one of the world’s most innovative and versatile artists. He performs regularly at the world’s most famous concert halls, including Carnegie Hall, New York, the Vienna Musikverein, the Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, as well as at international festivals such as the Salzburg Festival. Since 2022 he has been co-artistic director of the Heidelberg Spring Festival, and in 2023 he launched the Piano Festival of the Lucerne Festival.
Highlights of the 2025/26 season have included performances with the Budapest Festival Orchestra under Iván Fischer, the Tonhalle Orchestra, Zurich, under Paavo Järvi, the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia under Daniel Harding, the Munich Philharmonic under Antonello Manacorda, the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne under Renaud Capuçon and at the Kissinger Sommer, the Schwarzenberg Schubertiade and the Ruhr Piano Festival. He was artist in residence at Schloss Elmau and participated in the Wigmore Hall’s 125th anniversary celebrations.
Igor Levit’s 2019 recording of Beethoven’s complete piano sonatas with Sony Classical won international acclaim. His discography also includes Mendelssohn’s Songs without Words, created in response to the Hamas terrorist attack, and a live concert recording of Brahms’s piano concertos with the Vienna Philharmonic (2024).
In 2022 the long-term documentary Igor Levit — No Fear was released in cinemas, and in 2021 he published his book Hauskonzert, written in collaboration with Florian Zinnecker.
Igor Levit was named Artist of the Year at the 2020 Gramophone Classical Music Awards, Recording Artist of the Year by Musical America in 2020 and was the winner of the 2018 Gilmore Artist Award. In 2022 his album ON DSCH was named BBC Music Magazine’s Recording of the Year and also received the magazine’s Instrumental Award. For his political commitment he has received awards including the International Beethoven Prize and the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.
Igor Levit was born in Nizhny Novgorod, and at the age of eight moved to Germany. He completed his piano studies at the University of Music, Drama and Media in Hanover, gaining the highest marks in the history of the institute. In 2019 he was appointed professor of piano at his alma mater.
