The fantasia comes in many shapes and forms. But whether it’s the volcanic eruptions of J.S. Bach’s Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue in D Minor, BWV 903, or the haunting polyphony of Busoni’s Fantasia contrappuntistica (itself an expansive homage to Bach’s Art of Fugue), these works all have one thing in common: they rip up the rule book in favor of a freedom in form and spontaneity of expression. The result is some of the most technically fiendish and emotionally demanding works in the piano repertoire. It’s no wonder that it’s taken more than five years—and the completion of his Beethoven sonata cycle along the way—for pianist Igor Levit to feel ready to commit these pieces to disc. The Fantasia contrappuntistica and Liszt’s Sonata in B Minor form the central pillars of Fantasia, although each piece connects to others within the program. With the Fantasia contrappuntistica, the natural fit was Bach’s emotionally intense Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue, also in D Minor. For the Liszt, it was Alban Berg’s 1908 Sonata: “Both the Liszt and the Berg are in B Minor and they’re radically free,” Levit tells Apple Music Classical. “If you listen to them one after the other you can hear a very strong connection between them.” And the same can be said of the album as a whole: “You can take in every piece separately, but you’ll also hear a cohesive story from the start of the program to the end.” Here, Igor Levit delves into each piece on the album and explains their challenges, themes, and connections to each other. Suite for String Orchestra No. 3 in D Major, BWV 1068: “Air” (J.S. Bach, arr. for piano by A. Siloti) “The ‘Air’ is basically the preparation for the repertoire that follows: it’s an introduction. The music, in D Major, presents a solemn but also beautiful landscape: it’s as if you are taking a walk along a lakeside—you just meditate your way through it. When it comes to interpretation, I don’t play pieces with the goal of reinventing the wheel; I play them because I love them.” Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue in D Minor, BWV 903: I. “Fantasia” (J.S. Bach) “This is when you realize that the introduction you’ve just heard was a false promise, as what follows is far from peaceful. It’s highly chromatic—which is also true of Busoni’s Fantasia contrappuntistica—and so free. Basically it’s annotated improvisation. You have to really grab the bull by its horns from bar one; it’s a landslide of a piano piece.” Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue in D Minor, BWV 903: II. “Fugue” (J.S. Bach) “This piece combines in short what I believe the Fantasia contrappuntistica does later in this monumentally long way: you take one of the strictest musical forms, the fugue, which follows rule after rule after rule. You combine it with the fantasia idea and you get a volcano.” Piano Sonata in B Minor, S. 178: I. “Lento assai – Allegro energico” (Franz Liszt) “This groundbreaking piece has been connected with many narratives, from the Faust legend to Milton’s Paradise Lost. A couple of years ago, I would have given you an extramusical narrative, but now I think it’s up to the listener to decide what the story is behind the music. “When you hear the piece, you realize its dimensions are extraordinary, and so are its technical difficulties, its emotional demands, and the emotional impact it makes on you.” Piano Sonata in B Minor, S. 178: II. “Andante sostenuto – Quasi adagio” (Franz Liszt) “I can’t separate the second movement from the other two—of course the Sonata is structured in three movements, but it is a one-movement piece. It’s like one very long song. And so the darkness of the beginning gives way to the radical approach of the rest, and requires extreme emotional virtuosity. It’s kaleidoscopic, and puts you through a whirlwind of emotions, from craziness to incredible beauty, back to craziness, back to incredible beauty—all at once.” Piano Sonata in B Minor, S. 178: III. “Allegro energico” (Franz Liszt) “In the end you have this catastrophic, triumphant ending—it’s almost hysteria, as everything breaks loose. Liszt finishes the piece in the most solemn way. It’s unique. “The technical challenges come in articulating the passagework, keeping the clarity while you’re playing a gazillion notes per bar. When you’re performing this work you have to be strategically aware not to burn out too soon. It’s like a marathon: you have to train up for it and pace yourself.” Lieder aus Franz Schubert’s Schwanengesang, S. 560: No. 12, “Der Doppelgänger” (Franz Schubert, arr. F. Liszt) “Schubert’s song ‘Der Doppelgänger,’ heard here in Liszt’s haunting arrangement, is a setting of a poem by Heine that describes a ghost at night. It retains the key of Liszt’s B Minor Sonata and pre-echoes the same key of the Berg Sonata that comes soon after. It was Beethoven who called B Minor ‘the dark key,’ and I think that’s an essential element of these pieces: they bring out the horror and loneliness of B Minor.” Klavierstück in B Minor (Alban Berg) “Before I made this album, I’d never played this piece before. I discovered it recently when I was digging for rare treasures and saw there was something in B Minor by Alban Berg—it was destined to catch my eye. At under a minute long, it’s beautifully melancholic.” Piano Sonata Op. 1 (Alban Berg) “This is a highly compressed work—lots of ideas are squeezed together. Whereas there is hope in the Liszt Sonata, there is literally no light at the end of the tunnel here; there’s nothing other than horror and hopelessness. It’s heart-wrenching.” Fantasia contrappuntistica, BV 256 (Ferruccio Busoni) “I had wanted to record this larger-than-life work for such a long time: it is a great example of how we strive for freedom. Busoni explored the idea of absolute freedom in his writing, and in this work you have this utopian ideal as well as the realities of being bound by rules: of the fugue, of notation, and so on. What you hear is this constant struggle between the two extremes as music imitates life, which imitates music.” Nuit de Noël, BV 251 (Ferruccio Busoni) “There’s an arc on this disc from the lakeside stroll of the ‘Air’ at the beginning to the Nuit de Noël at the end. Here we’re back to beauty in nature, but it’s as if it’s been infected with the darkness, and with the horror you’ve experienced in the other pieces. Now there are doubts about whether the beauty and the calm and the peace will last.”