“I don’t pretend to know what Beethoven wants. I’m just attempting to grasp it”, said Igor Levit in an interview. His modest, personal approach to a composer whose oeuvre he describes as “marvellously free of barriers” culminated recently in Levit’s cyclical performance and recording of Beethoven’s 32 piano sonatas – a true tour-de-force achieved by the 32-year-old German-Russian pianist, hailed enthusiastically by the press. “Levit makes the music sound as if it couldn’t be any other way. As if it had to be just so. And we believe every note he plays”, wrote a music critic in the German weekly newspaper DIE ZEIT after one of Levit’s recitals. Every year he returns to the Ruhr Piano Festival, where he first performed in 2011 – thus, in 2020, he will be appearing here for the 13th consecutive time.