Igor Levit in Recital: January 22, 2026

Event is Live

Carnegie Hall Presents

Igor Levit, Piano

Thursday, January 22, 2026 8 PM Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage

Igor Levit by Felix Broede

“Igor Levit is like no other pianist” (The New Yorker). Tonight’s recital highlights his widely acclaimed approach to programming, featuring Beethoven’s monumental Diabelli Variations alongside Rzewski’s The People United Will Never Be Defeated variations. Levit’s Beethoven performances routinely attract worldwide excitement, and when he recorded these works together, The New York Times called it “an unusually high-profile (and persuasive) case for a modern work’s acceptance into the canon.” The Guardian agreed, writing in its five-star review that few versions, “including one by Rzewski himself … match Levit’s combination of supreme, sometimes breathtaking accuracy and his sustained intensity. The same sense of freshness and discovery runs through his Diabelli Variations.”

View Seating Chart (PDF)

Performers

Igor Levit, Piano

Program

BEETHOVEN Thirty-Three Variations on a Waltz by Diabelli, Op. 120

RZEWSKI The People United Will Never Be Defeated

Event Duration

The printed program will last approximately two and one-half hours, including one 20-minute intermission. Please note that there will be no late seating before intermission.

View Program Notes

Play Video

At a Glance

BEETHOVEN Thirty-Three Variations on a Waltz by Diabelli, Op. 120
In 1823, Anton Diabelli wrote a 32-bar waltz in C major and commissioned variations from a who’s who of Austrian composers. Among those who contributed to his “patriotic” anthology were Schubert, Hummel, Czerny, and Moscheles. Beethoven, however, as usual went his own way, composing a set of dazzlingly inventive variations on Diabelli’s tune that is one of the pinnacles of the piano repertoire.

RZEWSKI The People United Will Never Be Defeated
A self-described “political” composer, the late Frederic Rzewski often addressed contemporary issues in his music, as exemplified by this set of three dozen variations on a Chilean protest song from the 1970s. Igor Levit recalls that when he first heard The People United Will Never Be Defeated as a college student, “it completely blew me away. It was like seeing Star Wars for the first time.” He considers Rzewski’s work a masterpiece on the order of Beethoven’s “Diabelli” and J. S. Bach’s “Goldberg” variations.

Bios

Igor Levit

With an alert and critical mind, Igor Levit places his art in the context of social events and understands it as inseparably linked to them. The New York Times has described him as one of the “most important artists of his generation” and The New Yorker as a pianist “like no ...