The Russian-born German pianist Igor Levit, one of the most politically outspoken and intellectually restless musicians of his generation, is to launch his own record label — NO SILENCE — with three debut releases due on 23 October 2026 in partnership with Sony Classical.

The venture, which Levit describes as "not simply a label" but "a stance", marks one of the most ambitious independent moves by a classical musician in recent years. The name itself carries a specific weight: it was conceived in the immediate aftermath of the Hamas massacre in Israel on 7 October 2023, following an event Levit co-organised at the Berliner Ensemble titled 'Against Silence, Against Anti-Semitism'.

"The world can never have enough voices that intervene through art," Levit has said of the project. "NO SILENCE is the result of my life so far. And a new beginning. It is my answer to the many crises of our time, of which the loss of humanity, including through technology, is the greatest."

A first single — Levit's recording of Erik Satie's Gymnopédie No. 1 — will be released on 19 June, offering a characteristically quiet and beautiful opening gambit for a label whose name promises anything but reticence.

The three inaugural albums span an intriguing range. Levit himself performs Liszt's celebrated piano transcription of Beethoven's Eroica symphony, paired with Schoenberg's Ode to Napoleon — a work of fierce anti-tyranny conviction — featuring conductor Antonello Manacorda, the Kammerakademie Potsdam, and Burgtheater actress Dörte Lyssewski. A separate release introduces Lukas Sternath, winner of the ARD Music Competition and a BBC New Generation Artist, in a debut disc of Liszt and Schubert. In a more rarefied offering, Levit has also recorded Satie's Vexations — that radical, near-unperformable landmark of musical endurance — in a special edition of just 840 copies, each with an NFC chip and a signed page from the recording session.

The partnership with Sony Classical, which has been Levit's label home since his solo debut in 2013, gives NO SILENCE considerable institutional support. Mark Cavell, President of Sony Music Masterworks, praised Levit as someone who "continues to seek to have a positive impact on those around him and to always strive for originality, whether of thought or deed." Per Hauber, President of Sony Classical, described the launch as "the next milestone in our long-standing, close, and successful partnership."

But Levit's ambitions extend well beyond the release schedule. NO SILENCE has been deliberately designed to be genre-agnostic — open to artists of all musical traditions, with artistic quality and distinctiveness the only admission criteria. And there are plans for a NO SILENCE Foundation, bringing together a festival, an academy, and a support programme to provide practical backing for musicians across genres, cultures, and generations worldwide.

For an artist who has never been content merely to perform — Levit has organised benefit concerts, campaigned publicly on political causes, and been an audible presence in German civic life — NO SILENCE feels less like a business venture than a manifesto given commercial form. Whether it changes anything, of course, remains to be heard.

NO SILENCE launches with three albums on 23 October 2026. The first single, Gymnopédie No. 1, is released on 19 June 2026. https://nosilencerecords.com/