Tag Archive for: performance

Fears

I just watched No Fear, the documentary film by Regina Schilling featuring Igor Levit. It’s a feature-length documentary entirely focused on this pianist who, as we know, occupies a unique space in today’s musical landscape.

Levit plays very well and has a colossal repertoire, but his popularity isn’t based solely on musical merits. In reality, no career has ever been built solely on musical merits, neither today nor in the past. With Levit, however, this is especially evident. His handling of the COVID emergency was a clear example, with those 52 home concerts that garnered so much attention. But this feature film marks a leap forward in terms of public exposure.

It’s exactly two hours of film, with some footage of him performing live but mostly focused on showing him behind the scenes—not just rehearsing, recording, or preparing to take the stage, but also doing mundane activities like buying a pair of shoes or cooking rather unremarkably in his home while talking on a live video call (wearing, of course, a t-shirt emblazoned with the slogan “Love music, hate racism”).

And here lies much of the intent: to reveal the man behind the artist. With his good intentions, of course, but above all—and this is the new part—a man who is fragile, very fragile. The new masculinities embodied by one of today’s top piano figures, a celebrity who repeatedly speaks about his fears and insecurities. More than once, he even seems close to depression, a word he himself uses. It’s striking. And it all feels very sincere. Is it? I don’t know. It seems that way, but I don’t know Igor Levit personally to form a definitive opinion on the matter. I say this with the utmost respect: for him, of course, but also, and especially, for the many people who may find themselves in a similar situation. It’s also possible that this is his way of confronting those fears, which I completely understand, and I have no doubt that sharing them publicly can help many people feel less alone in such a profoundly human dimension.

On the other hand, however personal his reflections may be, the fact of presenting them in a documentary inevitably turns them into a spectacle, with all that entails. And it’s a spectacle designed to generate empathy. The entire documentary, in fact, shows the artist in everyday gestures we recognize as familiar—especially those tied to the use of a phone, like listening through its speaker to music he has just discovered (Muddy Waters, in this case, because it’s well known that no classical artist today can afford not to appreciate good popular music) or posting snippets of his daily life. And, of course, the unavoidable ecological commitment, presented through footage tied, unsurprisingly, to his presence on social media: a winter performance streamed for Greenpeace, among the trees of the Dannenröder Forest, about to be cut down.

Likewise, Igor Levit is not just any artist. He’s top, top, top, playing over a hundred concerts a year, chatting casually with Germany’s president, and being close friends with Marina Abramović. And he’s also very modern: just as he’s applauded with a standing ovation at the Concertgebouw, you might find him playing the Appassionata live on TikTok—with an unstoppable flood of reactions and comments, of course, because he’s also hugely popular on social media. In reality, the suspicion that this is all staged never quite goes away. But whether it is or not doesn’t really matter. The entire documentary is, in some way, a montage of moments crafted to present a certain image of the person—and that person makes a living from music. Ultimately, it’s about selling the musician by filming his daily life. The whole thing is, in essence, a performance.

But then again, isn’t everything we see on screen a performance? We’re always performing, posting our day-to-day lives, and this is especially true with music, with the narcissism that drives us to share the concert halls we play in and how wonderful our lives are on and off stage. At the same time, it’s a way to communicate, to inform, to make others a part of what we do. With this documentary, Levit does just that. He does so by offering a certain image of himself—an image that sells. It sells and it impacts.

It’s impactful to see him doubt so much, even during a recording session, with Roland Stevenson’s Passacaglia literally assembled phrase by phrase; it’s impactful to witness his absolute trust in his recording technician, dismissing the notion of the great artist who needs no one because his decisions stem solely from his genius; and it’s impactful to observe so explicitly his need for physical contact, for kisses and hugs, and his insistence on placing himself at the center of the narrative.

Of course, it’s a performance. That’s precisely why it resonates so much: because it turns someone else’s experience into emotions for you, the observer.

Perfection

I am often told that in today’s musical world everybody seeks perfection. Students, teachers, juries, producers, critics, and concert players; all would be apparently obsessed with perfection. This is not my perception at all. Many students certainly are preoccupied with it, often encouraged by their teachers. And this is sometimes (not always) the concern of members of juries. But my understanding is that many teachers, juries, and musicians are highly attracted to other very different dimensions of music. This, in any case, is not my point here. Nor is it the actual definition of what we call “perfection” that interests me. My focus is: why should we even need perfection?

Perfection is boring, in any aspect of life. It is practical, if we are referring to machines. But in people it is tiresome, and even suspicious. No, I quite definitely do not like perfection. But let’s go further. Perfection is fake. Always. It does not exist. We humans are not perfect. What we call perfection is just the closest possible approximation to an idea. That idea possibly is perfect. But the perfection of the most perfect of our products is not real, never will be. Making perfection the goal of our activity is an escape, a flight from reality. It is an attempt to surrender to something superior, something imagined, a chimera. In a certain sense, it is a religious yearning, a leap of faith. And its pursuance is the best possible way to end up frustrated and uncomfortable with our bodies, our daily life, and our immediate surroundings. If our goal is to remind ourselves that another more perfect world exists, and that it is not part of this life we live, then obsession for perfection is a splendid tool. But if we can think of our life in a radically different way, the quest for perfection is our worst enemy.