The pianist 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.
Igor Levit is co-artistic director of the festival Heidelberg Spring, and launched the Piano Festival of the Lucerne Festival, which took place for the third time in May 2025.
In the 2024/25 season he gave recitals at the Vienna Musikverein, the Berlin Philharmonie, the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, La Scala, Milan, Carnegie Hall in New York and in Los Angeles, Naples, Rome, Stockholm and Évian-les-Bains. He opened the season with the Staatskapelle Berlin, in Christian Thielemann’s first concert as General Music Director of the Berlin State Opera. Other performance highlights included appearances with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra under Antonio Pappano, a Prokofiev cycle with the Budapest Festival Orchestra under Ivan Fischer and Busoni’s Piano Concerto with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under Esa-Pekka Salonen.
Igor Levit’s 2019 recording of Beethoven’s complete piano sonatas with Sony Classical won international acclaim. His album of Mendelssohn’s Songs without Words was created in response to the Hamas terrorist attack. In autumn 2024 he released a live concert recording of Brahms’s piano concertos with the Vienna Philharmonic. In 2022 the long-term documentary Igor Levit — No Fear was released in cinemas, and in 2021 he published his first book, Hauskonzert, written in collaboration with Florian Zinnecker.
In 2019 Igor Levit was awarded the International Beethoven Prize for his political commitment. This was followed in 2020 by the award of the Sculpture ‘to B remembered‘ from the International Auschwitz Committee as well as of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of 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.
In Berlin, where he makes his home, he plays a Steinway Model D grand piano, which was kindly given to him by the Trustees of Independent Opera at Sadler’s Wells.
