Igor Levit (Russian: Игорь Левит), born 1987 in Gorky (now Nizhny Novgorod) is a Russian-German pianist.
I always talk about the hierarchy of art, and I always put music on the top of everything, because it's so immaterial.
Musical talent is maybe something, but there are no unmusical people. You're moved by music. It's total rubbish to say, "Oh, I'm unmusical. " It doesn't exist; it's ridiculous.
I'm not good at texting because I'm an older generation, old school. And nobody ever listens to the answering machine anymore. It's terrible.
I'm much better at saying something on the answering machine than texting.
If an artist tells you "this is an oak tree," then it better be an oak tree. It's how you proclaim things; if you say "the silence is the music," then it's the music.
When I play, what I see are people who mean something to me, both positively and negatively. It's my private life, in a way, what I see, and this is what I share.
People can text with two hands and are so fast and I am not. . . I just have that one person I want to talk to.
When you have humor, you have a base for collaboration. It is very important.
You never know what you're going to share. I can play, I know what is written - the marks, the things the composer tells me to do - and I do it, but it will still sound different each day.
There are no musically untalented people.
I think after music is performance because it is also an immaterial form of art, and then there's everything else.
The most unique thing about music making is sharing.
I have one guy that I really have to talk to once a day, and if I don't talk to him once a day, I really feel like something is not completed. This is, like, an attraction story.