During the five and a half years he studied with Karl-Heinz Kämmerling, Igor Levit devoted much of his time to perfecting the performance of a single Beethoven sonata. It was therefore natural that Levit’s great breakthrough came with the release of his brilliant first album dedicated to the German composer’s sonatas, whose complete cycle would establish him as one of the world’s finest pianists. ‘Beethoven is never still,’ Levit told The Guardian. ‘He is always creating new forms for his sonatas. He is a composer who lives his freedom and achieves it in ever new ways.’