Igor Levit - Life

The Guardian 100

Sony, 2 CDs

It is heartening that pianist Igor Levit should have chosen to call his new double album Life, given that it emerged out of the heavy fug of grief. Levit’s close friend Hannes Malte Mahler, an artist, was killed on his bike in 2016. This album is not only a monument to him but a contemplation – of the continuation of life, of how music is handed down from one generation to another, and of eternity itself.

What it doesn’t do is expect answers. Levit’s choices touch upon the spiritual, but the music is always mixed with the secular: the solemn ritual of the Good Friday Music from Wagner’s Parsifal, reimagined for piano by Liszt and rendered transcendental by Levit’s calm, spacious playing; Bach’s church melodies wrangled by the composer Busoni into a sorrowful Fantasia, a memorial to his father.