Ever since his début performance at the Ruhr Piano Festival in 2011, Igor Levit has pursued a remarkable global career. He is not only well-known as a perceptive performer and eloquent communicator (for instance, in his podcast series on Beethoven’s piano sonatas), but has also attracted attention through his engagement as an intellectual, participating in societal debate with trenchant remarks – in response to which he receives insults and even death threats. In a column for the Tagesspiegel, Igor Levit quoted jazz pianist Nina Simone: “An artist’s duty is to reflect the times.” Levit added: “Artists and intellectuals describe the current situation, the emotional situation: our role is to portray what is there, to make it heard, to express it in words. Music is not just the legacy left behind by composers. Music describes infinity, it is immaterial; it touches us and expresses something about our states of mind. It can remind us of our potential as human beings and of our reason for existing – how we love, what we fear, what we hope for, what we fight for, how we give up, only to rise once more. It tells of love, anger, mourning, and exhaustion; it describes our comradeship and the battles we fight – in a word, music describes what it feels like to be alive.”