Review by Simon Jenner, 30th May 2025
Beth Levin is an American pianist new to me. She’s a revelation. Her concert is the second hosted by MOOT at Unitarian at the Brighton Fringe. As with Wednesday’s concert, Norman Jacobs and Music Of Our Time have long been the South’s unsung heroes of contemporary music and the only one to programme it consistently.
Levin plays a first half of impeccable mainstream works. But several aren’t programmed so often. And wait for the second half.
Beginning with Mozart’s Piano Sonata No. 11 in A major K331 of 1783 Levin shows that though capable of filigree ornamentation and very small agogic hesitations in this striking Andante grazioso opening (a set of variations), hers is a copper-bottomed New York reading, such as you might expect Richard Goode to give. Direct, fresh, sonically as if there’s always a Steinway D under the fingers.
Levin’s tonal range though is striking and her palette iridescent with colours always clearly projected. From low ppps she can also make the quiet register sonically, amplifying the almost inaudible without distorting it; and clanguorous force equally controlled. Levin projects effortless contrasts and a sonance kin to the work.
So emphatically complete is her first movement that the audience clapped. But Levin moved straight into the Menuetto, again an unusual slow movement – except if you’re following Haydn’s surprises. Which Mozart still was. Every movement we’re told is wrapped in gold leaf. Not a bad way of putting it. The intermezzo-like element is delicately wrought here and never overplayed.
The famous Rondo alla turca finale is marked allegretto and though Kevin never oversteps this marking she really gives it the emphatic treatment it deserves: full of the Janissary percussion Mozart evokes in a jangly palette. A real smack of an arrival.
Next Ravel’s Menuet Antique from incredibly early in his career (1885 when he was 20) is his first mature work. And inflected by hommage to his first supporter Emanuel Chabrier who has died the previous year. So like his much later (1917) Le Tombeau de Couperin Ravel recruits an ancient style as a frame of mourning.
And of course incoming the classical period it fits beautifully. Levin who opens grandly with a heavier tread and some remarkable moments of hesitation, seems to be recomposing it. Levin brings out. Some of the inherent anachronisms rather than smoothing then over. She makes of it a work pretending calm but invoking storms.
There’s a fantastic tension here of old and new; of an artist finding his own voice by pastiching an ancient style and revealing a new mineral from old earth. Levin negotiates some quiet passages with a haunted beauty. Levin doesn’t think underplay the dark. Everything rises with a hallucinatory beauty. The grand has given way to a proper. Chabrier-like joy, out of his Marche Joyeuse.
The Mendelssohn Variations Serieuses Op 54 from 1841 as homage to Beethoven. It’s part of his great recovery as a composer from about 1837-38 after a few years if self-doubt and too much conducting in the service of others.
Why this is not played note often is a mystery. The theme comes from Mendelssohn’s early Viola Sonata written at 18, also bizarrely neglected. As the variations plunge through more complexity and layering, it’s clear we’re in the presence of greatness itself translated by greatness.
Levin terraces the sound, pulling back where necessary and then killing forward through particularly Variations 8 and 9 that drive the thrilling harmonica platters a d the memorable theme through a kind of Beethovenian struggle. Everything from Beethoven’s own titanic variation-firms to remodelling a Bach three-part invention mode on is referenced in these 17 variations. Levin’s is the most explosive and heroic I’ve heard. The rush to the finale is thrilling.
Peter Mennin (1923-83) is an American neoclassical composer of the mid-century, and an attractive one judging by the few works I know. I didn’t know this though. It’s his Five Piano Pieces (1949) near the peak of his early fame. And indeed it’s very nearly a Bach-style Partita. And should been labelled that even if it doesn’t have six movements.
Naturally Paul Hindemith’s influence – he taught in the US in the War and many student composers reflected his teaching.
It opens with a bright-eyed Prelude. Allegro brilliante and it is. Real neoclassic distinction here but the Aria marked Adagio is the gem raising to some anguish. The nearest I can like it too is the expressive slow heart of some of Hindemith’s own 1943 Ludos Tonalis. Mennin might take a few inflections but is his own man with his distinctive bittersweet lyricism.
The following Variation-Canzona is even more expressive, recalling some of the anguish of Prokofiev’s So at No 7 also from 1943. It’s not like Prokofiev though marked Allegro energetico it’s a dark even tragic utterance. The fourth movement a Canto – Andante (how many sing+-like indications here!) is as stripped back and expressively terraced as a quiet and suddenly delicate heartbreak. Mennin is consistently dark and distinctive. Yet again this Andante (we just about) rises to a passionate climax. Then fades into a twilight of pointilistic night music
The Toccata finale – Allegro Vivace e vigoroso – leads us back to the mood if the opening Prelude. Everything in between gas been dark and troubled. Three movements have trammelled player and hearer with something of the grief of the 1940s. Though the clouds aren’t vanished seems more purposeful than even the Prelude. We might be back in the works but this is purposeful, the Toccata heavier with the weight of where it’s been. A revelation.
As is Xilin Wang (b.1936) with his extraordinary story. Called the Shostakovich of China he was self-taught for. many years from 12, but attended Shanghai Conservatoire graduating in 1962. But by 1963 the times were abruptly changing. Wang resisted and gave a speech in 1964.
Imprisoned from 1964-78 in the cultural revolution under Mao Wang was forced to work as a labourer. He lost a tooth and a fifth of his hearing. Returning to some favour he also discovered contemporary western music and has written nine symphonies and various concerts.
His 1998 ‘Night in a Deserted Village’ from his Folk Song Suite Op 36 is an attractive hypnotic and repetitive piece, full of quiet motoric rhythms. Perhaps inflected by Bartok it’s not really like that but is a quietly driven piece gradually winding up in intensity. Melodic but quite tough, it has a kinship to Mennin and that kind of sound world.
A stunning concert. Levin is a discovered master.
