Albert ehrnrooth

The Russian-German pianist Igor Levit, well known for his brilliant and lucid interpretations of works by Bach, Beethoven and Brahms, will once more take on the mammoth task of performing Erik Satie’s Vexations (1893-1894?).

The whole composition fits on one music manuscript sheet, but it’ll take Igor Levit close to 16 hours to perform the piece. The reason being that Satie wants the artist to repeat the motif 840 times. He doesn’t specify that this should happen during one marathon session, but that’s the way the piece has been performed ever since the avantgarde composer John Cage premiered it in 1963. But Cage had the help of more than 10 other pianists. Igor Levit is on his own.

Don’t worry, Igor Levit knows what he’s doing. In 2020, during lockdown, he streamed more than 50 concerts from his home to a steadily growing, worldwide online audience. Vexations became an unlikely 15 hours live-streaming success.

Vexations was not published during Satie’s lifetime and was only rediscovered by John Cage in Paris in the 1940s. Was the piece just intended to be a ‘blague’, one of Satie’s typical jokey, very short works? Or is it a deeply mystical work that only starts to weave its enlightening spell after being exposed to it for 16 hours?

It’s for you to find out this coming Thursday 24 April. The show starts at 10 AM and will probably last until Friday 25 april, 01.00 AM

To stimulate your visual attention the Serbian conceptual artist Marina Abramović has been tasked with designing a site-specific set. Expect the unexpected. Levit and Abramović have collaborated previously in a series of performances of Bach’s Goldberg Variations. Marina Abramović will not participate on stage, but she delivers an introduction to the performance.