Igor Levit – No Fear is an impressive piece of observational cinema. Director Regina Schilling presents an intimate portrait of this virtuoso pianist in his prime, and justifiably devotes much of the film’s two-hour run time to Levit’s playing. The film ultimately becomes about Levit’s response to the pandemic, but the breathtaking artistry of this man is soul-stirring. Schilling keeps her focus on the music throughout.
Viewers who are familiar with the pianist and his life and career are likely to have particular appreciation for this film. I wasn’t familiar with Mr. Levit, and the cinema verite-inspired style that director Schilling employs didn’t provide much context. I felt as if I’d just met a talented and fascinating stranger, and came to know him through an exceptionally trying time in global history.
The film opens in Berlin, May 2019. Levit anxiously observes a team of piano movers bring his Steinway up a particularly tricky flight of stairs into his apartment. Schilling immediately introduces her device of depicting Levit’s social media activity, as he posts a photo confiding, “In my next life, I’ll play the flute…” When Schilling asks him if he anticipates protests from his neighbors, the pianist replies, “Legally, I am considered noise.”
Early in the film, Levit and German recording engineer and producer Andreas Neubronner are completing work on the pianists’s 2019 recording Beethoven: Complete Piano Sonatas for Sony Classical. The relationship between the artist and the multi-Grammy winning sound man is the most charming aspect of the film; their interaction is unfailingly lovely and supportive. Worried about his execution of a particular passage, Neubronner assures Levit that this is, “one of those situations where the performer corrects the composer.” Levit fingers the notes on Neubronner’s forearm as they listen to the playback. “Brilliant editing,” Neubronner quips.
The filmmaker may likely have set out to document the 108-stop world tour that Levit mounted in 2020 in support of the recording. However, by March the COVID-19 pandemic began to grip Europe and truncated the tour, rendering this a different sort of artistic portrait.
Levit stares down the dark forebodings of the rapidly-spreading virus, and almost immediately begins his hauskonzerte (house concerts) series, live-streaming from his apartment in Berlin every night at 7pm sharp. “Private” sessions in which he played everything from Joplin and Gershwin to Bach and Liszt, and of course Beethoven. He even took on the technical challenge of Scottish composer Ronald Stevenson’s massive “Passacaglia on DSCH.” But the most touching material is innovative 20th-century composer Morton Feldman’s “Palais de Mari.” Says Levit, “The purpose of such music is to give us time.”
In all, Levit performed 52 hauskonzerte via social media. He became a comfort and an inspiration to tens of thousands of people, and claims to have enjoyed “maximum artistic independence. “I owed nothing to anyone,” he proudly states.
This is a film that leaves in the in-between bits: the car rides, the mic setups, the meet-and-greets. And the panic attacks. The artist is not afraid to be vulnerable on camera. I occasionally cringed, and at several moments wanted director Schilling to pick up the pace. But the pacing turns out to be quite appropriate for a depiction of life during the height of the pandemic. Nobody knew where this was going and we all had a lot of time on our hands. Igor Levit shared his anxiety and brooding, his determination and hope, and of course, his remarkable music in a creative and powerful way, directly to people who were ministered to by his art.
The film closes in December 2020 with a last social media post. “Today I will play a concert. For the environmental activists in the Dannenroder Forest.” Levit sets up and plays in the forest, defying a not-surprisingly controversial clear-cut operation. As he plays American composer Frederic Rzewski’s “The People United Will Never Be Defeated!” I noted that one police officer from the goon squad stayed to listen.
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Igor Levit – No Fear directed by Regina Schilling is currently screening at Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival in Toronto. hotdocs.ca
