Yoav Levanon

“an authentic musician, who has everything to become one of the major pianists of this century”
(Diapason Magazine)

“At the age of 19, Israeli pianist Yoav Levanon already shows tremendous power and maturity”, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung commented on the young pianist’s impressive appearance at the 2022 Europa Open Air in Frankfurt where he performed Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra and Music Director Alain Altinoglu. The televised concert took place in front of an audience of 25,000 at site and almost half a million viewers worldwide.

Following debuts at Boulez-Saal Berlin, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, Munich’s Prinzregententheater, Settimane Musicali di Ascona and Menuhin Festival in Gstaad last season, in 2023/24 the exceptional young artist will be performing piano recitals at Tonhalle Zürich and Elbphilharmonie Hamburg. Orchestral engagements take him to the Liepāja Symphony Orchestra, the Poznan Philharmonic Orchestra and the Orquesta de la Communidad de Madrid. He also returns to the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra, with whom he will perform Franz Liszt’s piano concertos in concert and record them on CD for Warner Classics under the direction of Michael Sanderling.

Previous appearances include a solo performance in a “Piano Summit” presented by Martha Argerich at Schloss Elmau followed by a recital at the Piano aux Jacobins Festival in Toulouse and a recital at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris. His performance was highly praised in a critic in Diapason: “Yoav Levanon is not only a stunning virtuoso. His assertive interpretative choices already make him an authentic musician, who has everything to become one of the major pianists of this century.”

At the beginning of 2021, Yoav Levanon took part in a filmed project with Daniel Barenboim and soon after he signed an exclusive recording agreement with Warner Classics. His debut album A Monument for Beethoven with the label was released in May 2022. It attracted great attention from reviewers worldwide and garnered many excellent reviews.

Yoav Levanon first appeared on stage at the age of 4 and soon became a winner of his first National Piano Competition in Israel. He won his first Gold Medal at an International Piano Competition in the USA a year later and performed on the prestigious stage of Carnegie Hall in New York. Following his orchestral debut with the Israel Chamber Orchestra he went on to take part in the Tsinandali Festival, Georgia, where he played Mozart and Bach Concertos for Two Pianos and Orchestra with acclaimed pianist Sergei Babayan. During 2018 Yoav performed Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. In 2019, Yoav appeared as one of the youngest pianists ever in the festival history of the renowned Verbier Festival and was celebrated a “discovery”. His debut solo recital, broadcast globally on medici.tv, gained the largest online audience of any of the 2019 Festival’s events.

Yoav Levanon was guided by top piano professors and musicians in Israel and abroad. He was privileged to take part in the ‘Piano Program for Outstanding Young Pianists’ at the Jerusalem Music Center, working with the prestigious American concert pianist Murray Perahia as well as working under the guidance of distinguished pianist Sir Andras Schiff in his artist performance studio at the Barenboim-Said Academy in Berlin.

Chopin Piano Concerto No.2 with hr-SO / Altinoglu

Liszt: La Campanella (aus: Grandes études de Paganini)

Yoav Levanon records Liszt's La Campanella (from Grandes études de Paganini, S. 141) © Warner Classics

“Levanon is undaunted by Liszt’s Sonata, giving a performance of heroic sweep. A powerful player, the 18-year-old is nimble and articulate in the virtuoso passages, dramatic with the rhetorical flourishes, tender and lyrical when required. ”

BBC Music Magazine, June 2022

“You are captivated from the first to the last note by piano playing that is not only characterized by outstanding ease and dexterity on the keyboard, but also displays amazing virtuosity and an understanding of musical form which is even more sensational for an 18-year-old. Yoav Levanon captures every motif, every theme, every sentence in its own unique way and experiences a lively, imaginatively “organic” design. No tone, no phrase is out of context. The fact that this great music develops meaningfully and compellingly is seldom conveyed so well. Five stars with an exclamation mark! First class transparent sound from the Teldex studio in Berlin.”

(Fono Forum, May 2022)

“Very impressive playing, very contemplative — very mature playing. This sounds like a very thoughtful pianist who could be 20 years older, so that there is a genuine sense of engagement here, a sense of maturity that belies his age. And a very interesting programming idea to bring these pieces together.”

(BBC Radio 3 Record Review, May 2022)

“Above all, however, he succeeded in bringing the composer [Robert Schumann] and his moods to life with a play rich in contrasts”

(Bad Kissinger, 2021)

“The Israeli pianist possesses a thundering energy at playing the piano that resonates, spinning under the starry dome of the choir as if he tries to blend into a torrential vertigo, to join some cosmic vibration.”

(Marie-Aude Roux, Le Monde, 2020)

“an authentic musician, with innate and natural lyricism”

(Le Temps, 2019)