CCMusic.com

Igor Levit's new double album Fantasia features a wide range of works spanning a period of almost two centuries from 1720 to 1910 and showcases key compositions by Franz Liszt, Ferruccio Busoni, Johann Sebastian Bach and Alban Berg. The starting point of the four paradigmatic works featured on the double album is the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Levit has chosen Bach's exceptional Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue in D minor and combined it with Liszt's B minor Sonata, a highly charged piece that at the time of it's composition looked far ahead into the future (which Levit is currently performing to great acclaim all over the world), together with Busoni's Fantasia contrappuntistica, in which Busoni perpetuated the Bach tradition, and Alban Berg's only Piano Sonata. These four major works are complemented by four shorter pieces including Alexander Siloti's arrangement of the famous Air from Bach's Third Orchestral Suite, Liszt's transcription of Schubert's song Der Doppelgänger, Busoni's Nuit de Noël and an early piano piece in B minor by Alban Berg.