What the Critics Say
…this is a voice which deserves hearing. His most magical moments are where the tempi flow from a source seemingly other than that which we draw on in our own humdrum universe.
Dominy Clements
Fanfare, USA
This is one of the most ingratiating, thoughtful, and lyrical performances of the Schumann Piano Concerto that I have ever heard… Levy and his partner, legendary singer turned conductor Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, find a quality of dramatic interplay that is quite magical.
(EDEM 3374 Schumann Piano Concerto)
BBC Music Magazine, UK
An all-time great recording of the Schumann Concerto, lovingly phrased and exultantly voiced, matched by a heart-rending account of Op. 92 Konzertstück and rare Fischer-Dieskau Bonuses.
Julian Haylock
Gramophone, UK
It would be hard to find a more beautiful version. Anyone will want this appealing disc, which is faultlessly recorded.
Fanfare, USA
Firmness of outline and unponderous weight of tone remind one of Claudio Arrau in his middle years… Strongly recommended.
(ED 1001 Brahms)
Fonoforum, Germany
A knowledgeable pianist, with a considerable ability to capture hidden forces and indirect illuminations, bringing them to the surface.
(ED 1001 Brahms)
Monsalvat, Spain
A Masterly Performance.
CD Review, UK
A highly recommendable recording. I sat enthralled by Levy for the full 72 minutes.
Gramophone, UK
The undertaking is obviously a labour of love. His emotional ardour is unmistakable.
(ED 1043 Schumann)
Hi-Fi News & Record Reviews, UK
Daniel Levy is a susceptible, most romantic pianist, able to convey Schumann’s innermost secrets with heart-easing warmth and affection.
(ED 1043 Schumann)
Peter Cossé, Germany
I should like to call it passionate thought-fulness, which distinguishes Levy both here and on other occasions and which lets us recognise the greatness of his playing.
Diapason, France
His artistic touch is so profound so as to allow his piano to sing with great, unique freedom of expression.
Fonoforum, Germany
Daniel Levy is much more than a pianist who draws his strengths from mysterious sources. He seems to be truly committed to a profound transmission of the contents of the composition and the representation of the work itself.
(ED 1043 Schumann)
CD Classica, Italy
Levy is a pianist of rare quality, at home even in those passages of internal tension which he plays with a remarkable sense of colours and with intense involvement. Superb performance.
Fonoforum, Germany
Levy’s recording is the first documentation of a remarkable part of Wagnerian pianistic work that has an importance for the interpretation which is not merely statistical.
(ED 1024 Piano Recital for Venice)
Gramophone, UK
How could a pianist achieve the crescendo, the pinnacles of sound, the emotional peaks Wagner demanded of his already oversized orchestra? But, with Levy at the piano, it is an exceptional thrilling experience, climax building on climax.
(ED 1024 Piano Recital for Venice)
MusicWeb International, UK
Touching and powerful performances of some well-loved Chopin.
Ian Lace
(EDEM 3375 Daniel Levy plays Chopin)
Bernard Jacobson
The performance, moreover, is not merely brilliant pianism but–more of a rarity–revelatory music-making. Too many performers are inclined to rush through silences as if afraid of losing their audience, but Levy allows plenty of time for negotiating Beethoven’s rests, and he also takes time to permit the occasional melodic decoration to make its full effect.
CD Classic, UK
Momentum and brilliance are typical of the whole recital, which can be warmly recommended as a conspectus of Liszt in his prime.
Gramophone, UK
One can readily admire Levy’s sonority in the surging lines and his ability to sustain a line and characterise the changing moods of the music.
(ED 1001 Brahms)
Fanfare, USA
Levy is also a Mendelssohnian of stature: sweet but rich tone, supple phrasing, paradoxically ardour-driven restraint… Warmly recommended, warmly recommended.
(ED 1024 Piano Recital for Venice)
Gramophone, UK
His performance of one’s music supreme masterpiece is affectionate and absorbing, with a particular response to Schubert’s darker, more elegiac imaginings. The six Moments Musicaux are successful, never leading you in doubt that Levy is a devoted Schubertian… The recordings are impressively refined.
Fanfare, USA
Levy plays the Four Impromptus splendidly… I do not think I could praise him more highly than by saying that his G-Major Sonata will now take its place alongside Brendel’s and Lupu’s in my Pantheon of treasured interpretations.
MusicWeb International, UK
“Inspired Mozart played with élan.”
Ian Lace
Articles & Interviews
A Daniel Levy Celebration
By Bernard Jacobson
It may seem curious, in these pervasively materialistic days, to speak of a morality of art. We have all of us encountered artists whose motivation seems to lie in the desire for personal gain or glory rather than in any higher aim. As Daniel Levy once put it in an interview, “commercial considerations often tend to override artistic aspirations,” and soloists “may be seduced…
The Voice of the Piano, and More
An Appreciation by Bernard Jacobson
My first encounter with Daniel Levy came around a decade ago when I reviewed his recording of Schubert piano music for Fanfare Magazine. Back then, I suggested that his version of the G-major Sonata ranked alongside those of Alfred Brendel and Radu Lupu in what I termed “my Pantheon of treasured interpretations.”
Passionate Thoughtfulness
By Peter Cossé (Germany)
Daniel Levy’s playing of the Campanella study by Franz Liszt, which here demonstrates the virtuoso and experimental Liszt in the context of a programme of Italian Liszt works, reveals many aspects of the temperament and artistic objectives of a musician who has shown himself in recent years to his international public to be both a man of earnest character and…
Profound Reason of Sound
By Marco Maria Tosolini (Italy)
Western culture and the history of its thought, rich and suggestive as they may be, often force us into perceiving the intuitive and the rational as irremediably separate when it comes to the world of phenomenon. On occasion not even music, whose fathomless unity of tone should be taken for granted, can escape this trenchant dichotomy…
Daniel Levy, In His Own Words
By Peter Burwasser (Fanfare Magazine, USA)
Daniel Levy has been the subject of two previous Fanfare articles, by Ian Lace and, most recently, Bernard Jacobson. His thoughtful and independent career is naturally interesting to the Fanfare community. Levy, born and educated in Argentina in a Moroccan Sephardic family,spent his formative years in Italy, and now resides in London.
Daniel Levy, A Complete Musician
Ian Lace meets the pianist in London (Fanfare USA)
Daniel Levy is a sensitive yet assertive musician who is profoundly committed to his art. He is concerned about music in all aspects – its spiritual, philosophical, and therapeutic properties as well as its performance and recording. He is concerned about the future of music and has strong opinions about the role of…
Daniel Levy, Looking Between the Lines
CD Compact (Spain)
You have been described as a pianist who possesses a refined and cultured art as well as a pianist who restores the immense human and poetic message with great sensibility, when interpreting Schumann. Are these the characteristics that give character to an interpretation of the great works of the romantic repertoire?
Daniel Levy, Doing One's Own
By Heuwell Tircuit
(In Tune, Japan)
Born in Argentina, Levy built a varied career around Western Europe and America. Besides being a widely varied musician playing recitals, chamber music, orchestral concerts, Levy also built an impressive reputation as a top Lieder accompanist. But that’s not the half of it. As a scholar, he studied philosophy…
Maestro at Work
Hi-Fi Choice (UK)
What are your first musical recollections?
I was four when I first discovered the piano, which my mother used to play at home. We also listened to recordings of Horowitz, Heifetz, Toscanini and others. It was a gradual discovery which took place even before I had a teacher. I was attracted by the various possible combinations of sounds…
Meeting of Minds
Levy and Fischer-Dieskau – The Singing Baton Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau conducts Brahms.
(BBC Music Magazine, UK)
With almost 20 solo and chamber discs already issued on the Edelweiss Emission Label, Argentinean-born pianist, polymath and author Daniel Levy has brought out a new account of Brahms’ defiant First Piano Concerto…
Daniel Levy Talks About...
Music, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Argentina, and (briefly) himself
By Bernard Jacobson
(Fanfare Magazine, USA)
Talking to Daniel Levy is an experience at once invigorating and reassuring. In a time too much dominated by publicity stunts, “big names,” and commerce taking precedence over art…
Listen & Harmonize
By Nathalie Kyrou (Arteri Magazine, Cyprus)
Plato said “Philosophy is the highest music”
Beethoven said “Music is a higher revelation that all wisdom and philosophy”.
Could music be the highest philosophy?
Experiencing the Cyprus’ International Music Festival and an interview with one of the artists opens the doors to musical enlightenment…
