I went back to listen to Op. 106, and compared it with a pianist with a very similar interpretation (Jean-Frédéric Neuburger). In the first movement Levit never gives the music a real sense of forward motion, nor does he let it breathe in the more relaxed moments; Neuburger does both. This is not to say that his playing is metronomic it just lacks a certain inner life. There's not much snap to the rhythms, which are sometimes fudged, and there's also some sloppy voicing (e.g. not bringing out the top note in the opening motive) although the playing is overall technically superior to Neuburger's, especially the softer playing. I guess this is a subjective reaction for me personally but I don't get any sense of joy or passion from the movement. In the scherzo the main thing I can fault Levit for is his phrasing—he puts an accent on every bar without fail, and the accents are all uniform, so I don't personally get a sense of the larger phrases, which are all either seven or nine bars long in a sublime example of Beethovenian wit. His performance generally lacks a sense of....capriciousness I guess. But a lot of other pianists also fall flat in that regard. Levit's adagio is fine, dynamically very restrained and impossible to mistake for anything "appassionato e con molto sentimento" but such dirgelike performances have been an acceptable interpretive option ever since Solomon, at least. Nothing special but definitely listenable. Finally in the fugue Levit actually seems to wake up and deliver a performance that builds momentum and shows off some of the macho brashness you mentioned, but always tempered with a bit of humour. I guess that's the movement he spent most of his time practicing. It's a sparkling performance and reveals that he can turn out better than routine work, which makes the comparative flatness of the first three movements all the more puzzling given that this is, after all, a studio recording.
In any case I feel a bit more positive about Levit although probably still not enough to buy the complete cycle
