Robert Levin

Pianist Robert Levin has been heard throughout the United States, Europe, Australia, and in Asia, in recital, as soloist, and in chamber concerts. He has performed with the orchestras of Atlanta, Berlin, Birmingham, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Montreal, Utah and Vienna with such conductors as Bernard Haitink, Sir Neville Marriner, Seiji Ozawa, Sir Simon Rattle and Joseph Silverstein. On fortepiano he has appeared with the Academy of Ancient Music, London Classical Players, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, with Christopher Hogwood, Sir Charles Mackerras, Nicholas McGegan, Sir Roger Norrington, and Sir John Eliot Gardiner. He has performed frequently at such festivals as Sarasota, Tanglewood, Ravinia, Bremen, Lockenhaus, and the Mozartwoche in Salzburg. As a chamber musician he has long associations with violist Kim Kashkashian and the New York Philomusica.

Robert Levin is renowned for his restoration of the Classical period practice of improvised embellishments and cadenzas; his Mozart and Beethoven performances have been hailed for their active mastery of the Classical musical language. He has made recordings for DG Archiv, CRI, Decca/Oiseau-Lyre, Deutsche Grammophon Yellow Label, ECM, New York Philomusica, Nonesuch, Philips, and SONY Classical. He has recorded the complete Bach concertos with Helmuth Rilling as well as the English Suites and the Well-Tempered Clavier for Hänssler’s 172-CD Edition BachAkademie. Other recordings include a Beethoven concerto cycle with Sir John Eliot Gardiner and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique for DG Archiv, and a Mozart concerto cycle with Christopher Hogwood and the Academy of Ancient Music for Decca Oiseau-Lyre.

Robert Levin studied piano with Louis Martin and composition with Stefan Wolpe in New York. He worked with Nadia Boulanger in Fontainebleau and Paris while still in high school, afterwards attending Harvard. Upon graduation he was invited by Rudolf Serkin to head the theory department of the Curtis Institute of Music, a post he left after five years to take up a professorship at the School of the Arts, SUNY Purchase, outside of New York City. In 1979 he was Resident Director of the Conservatoire Américain in Fontainebleau, France, at the request of Nadia Boulanger, and taught there from 1979 to 1983. From 1986 to 1993 he was professor of piano at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany. President of the International Johanne Sebastian Bach Competition and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he is Dwight P. Robinson, Jr. Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University.

In addition to his performing activities, Robert Levin is a noted theorist and Mozart scholar, and is the author of a number of articles and essays on Mozart. His completions of Mozart fragments are published by Bärenreiter, Breitkopf & Härtel, Hänssler, and Peters, and have been recorded and performed throughout the world. Levin’s cadenzas to the Mozart violin concertos have been recorded by Gidon Kremer with Nikolaus Harnoncourt and the Vienna Philharmonic for Deutsche Grammophon and published by Universal Edition. Henle has issued his cadenzas to the flute, oboe and horn concertos and will publish his cadenzas to the Beethoven violin concerto. His reconstruction of the Symphonie Concertante in E-flat major for four winds and orchestra, K.297B, was premièred by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra at the Mozartwoche in Salzburg, and has subsequently been performed world wide. The first of the four recordings of the work, by Philips, won the 1985 Grand Prix International du Disque. A monograph treating the origin, authenticity, and details of the composition has been published by Pendragon Press.

In August 1991 Robert Levin’s completion of the Mozart Requiem was premièred by Helmuth Rilling at the European Music Festival in Stuttgart, Germany, to a standing ovation. Published by Hänssler-Verlag, it has been performed world wide and recorded numerous times. Carnegie Hall commissioned him to prepare a completion of the Mozart Mass in C minor, K. 427 and this was premiered in 2005.

Photo © Christian Steiner