Making magic

Upon hearing a teenage Israeli prodigy performing at the Piano aux Jacobins Festival in Toulouse, the critic of Diapason did not beat about the bush: ‘Yoav Levanon is not only a stunning virtuoso. His assertive interpretative choices already make him an authentic musician who has everything to become one of the major pianists of this century.’ It’s quite an assertion, but Levanon’s progress since then seems to suggest that it may just be right.

He is now 18 and his first album (on Warner Classics) was released into the wild in May this year. It centres on two enormously challenging Romantic masterpieces: Liszt’s Sonata in B minor and Schumann’s in C Op 17, along with works by Mendelssohn and Chopin. All four of the composers were involved in helping to fundraise for the building of a Beethoven memorial in Bonn, hence the album’s title . Speaking to me via Zoom from the