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Beth Levin (born December 17, 1950) is an American classical pianist in the Romantic tradition of her teachers Marian Filar, Rudolf Serkin, Leonard Shure, and Dorothy Taubman at the Taubman Institute. Levin is devoted to the highly expressive and demanding repertoire of Beethoven, Schumann, Chopin, Brahms, Rachmaninoff, and Ravel, as well as to the work of leading modernists such as Anders Eliasson, David Del Tredici, Alexander Goretzky, Louis Karchin, and Scott Wheeler.
Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Levin's fascination with music developed from the age of 3, when she first began piano lessons. Levin says: "Some of my earliest memories are of playing as my father sang. We were fortunate to have a brilliant pianist living just around the corner: Cecille Sharlip, who had emigrated from Europe to study at the Curtis Institute of Music. Sharlip guided me until I was 12, at which time she suggested I audition for the great Chopin interpreter Marian Filar, who was then teaching at the Settlement Music School (Philadelphia). I absorbed a sense of musical tradition that has never left me." [1] Working with Filar, himself a former student of Walter Gieseking, led to Levin winning at the age of 12 an audition to perform with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Four years later, she again appeared with that orchestra.
At the age of 17, Levin successfully auditioned for Serkin, then a professor of piano and director of the Curtis Institute. Levin said: “Mr. Serkin was an inspiration the moment he walked into a room, a single word evoking the eloquence of a poem.” [1] Other teachers at Curtis included chamber musicians Arnold Steinhardt and David Soyer, first violinist and cellist, respectively, of the Guarneri Quartet. Levin completed her academic work as a Boston University student of Leonard Shure, who was in turn a student and teaching assistant of the great Beethoven interpreter Artur Schnabel. "I recall Shure asking me at the audition why I made music. 'Because I love it,' I said simply. He suggested we start lessons that very day." [1]
As a freshly minted performer, Levin undertook years of travel, both within the United States and abroad. Branching out into as many performing roles as possible, she appeared as a soloist, chamber music participant, and concerto soloist. As an artist in the “Music From Marlboro” program (an offshoot of the Marlboro Music School and Festival and the Curtis Institute), Levin worked with pianist Paul Badura-Skoda, violinist Sandor Vegh, founder of the renowned Vegh Quartet, and bassist Julius Levine,. She appeared in other chamber music venues, accompanying Raphael Hillyer of the Juilliard Quartet and flutist Paula Robison. Still in her early 20s, Levin appeared as piano concerto performer with the Boston Symphony Orchestra led by Arthur Fiedler, the Seattle Symphony led by American musician and conductor Milton Katims, and the Boston Philharmonic led by Benjamin Zander. European travel led Levin to Spain, Iceland, Serbia, and Turkey. In Iceland, where she continues to appear yearly as soloist, she founded and played for 10 years with Trio Borealis as well as with members of the Iceland Symphony Orchestra. She traveled throughout Spain as a member of the trio. She gave master classes in Serbia and Turkey under the aegis of the U.S. State Department.
Establishing herself in New York, Levin studied with pre-eminent piano mentor Dorothy Taubman. Levin gave recitals at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Steinway Hall, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She worked with members of the New York Philharmonic and recorded with other Marlboro musicians for Columbia Masterworks Records. Concerts throughout the U.S. featured work with such chamber ensembles as the Audubon Quartet and the Vermeer Quartet. Levin is one of five musicians who comprise Vista Lirica, a chamber group devoted to the cause of environmentalism and the music of the Romantics. As part of her continued commitment to contemporary composers, Levin collaborated with Del Tredici to perform his “Ballad in Yellow.” Levin has appeared in broadcast interviews and performances on radio stations WNYC, WNYE, and WQXR in New York, WFMT in Chicago, and WGBH in Boston. She conducted American master classes at such institutions as New York University and The College of William & Mary.
Among Levin's recordings are A Single Breath: Beethoven's Last Three Piano Sonatas (Navona Records, 2013), Beethoven's Diabelli Variations (Centaur Records, 2011) and Bach's Goldberg Variations (Centaur Records, 2008). "Revelatory", commented Richard Brody in The New Yorker on Levin's approach to the Beethoven sonatas, adding that the pianist had "conveyed the sense of being in the vicariously conjured presence of Beethoven himself." [2]
Jeremy Eichler, in a review in The New York Times on June 10, 2005, described Levin's pianism thus: "Ms. Levin [keeps] the ear engaged with boldly inflected readings and an impressive ability to convey emotion without exhibition." [3]
Pau Casals i Defilló, known in English by his Spanish name Pablo Casals, was a Spanish and Puerto Rican cellist, composer, and conductor. He made many recordings throughout his career of solo, chamber, and orchestral music, including some as conductor, but he is perhaps best remembered for the recordings he made of the Cello Suites by Bach. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963 by President John F. Kennedy.
Pamela Frank is an American violinist, with an active international career across a varied range of performing activity. Her musicianship was recognized in 1999 with the Avery Fisher Prize, one of the highest honors given to American instrumentalists. In addition to her career as a performer, Frank holds the Herbert R. and Evelyn Axelrod Chair in Violin Studies at the Curtis Institute of Music, where she has taught since 1996, and is also an Adjunct Professor of Violin at the University of Southern California's Thornton School of Music since 2018.
Rudolf Serkin was a Bohemian-born Austrian-American pianist. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest Beethoven interpreters of the 20th century.
The Marlboro Music School and Festival is a retreat for advanced classical training and musicianship held for seven weeks each summer in Marlboro, Vermont, in the United States. Public performances are held each weekend while the school is in session, with the programs chosen only a week or so in advance from the sixty to eighty works being currently rehearsed. Marlboro Music was conceived as a retreat where young musicians could collaborate and learn alongside master artists in an environment removed from the pressures of performance deadlines or recording. It combines several functions; Alex Ross describes it as functioning "variously as a chamber-music festival, a sort of finishing school for gifted young performers, and a summit for the musical intelligentsia".
Peter Adolf Serkin was an American classical pianist. He won the Grammy Award for Most Promising New Classical Recording Artist in 1966, and he performed globally, known for not only "technically pristine" playing but also a "commitment to contemporary music". He taught at the Curtis Institute of Music, the Juilliard School, Yale University, and Bard College.
Ruth Laredo was an American classical pianist.
Richard Goode is an American classical pianist who is especially known for his interpretations of Mozart and Beethoven.
Michael Tree, born Michael Applebaum, was an American violist.
Benita Valente is an American soprano whose career has encompassed the operatic stage as well as performance of lieder, chamber music and oratorio. She is especially lauded for her interpretations of Mozart and Handel, but she also excelled in certain Verdi roles. The New York Times once referred to her as "as gifted a singer as we have today, worldwide."
John Dalley is an American violinist. He was raised in a musical family. His father was an orchestra conductor, violinist, composer, instrumental teacher, and music educator. His mother, from Bloomington, Illinois, was a cellist, music teacher, and music publisher.
Harold Wright was an American musician who was the principal clarinetist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1970 to 1993.
Jonathan Biss is an American pianist, teacher, and writer based in Philadelphia. He is the co-artistic director of the Marlboro Music Festival.
Stephanie Ann Chase is an American classical violinist.
Ida Levin was an American concert violinist. Levin taught at the Sander Vegh International Chamber Music Academy in Prague and was a former faculty member of Harvard University, the Colburn School and the European Mozart Academy.
Leonard Shure was an American concert pianist. He began his career as a performer at the age of 5 and as a teenager studied privately with Artur Schnabel in Germany.
David Serkin Ludwig is an American composer, teacher, and Dean of Music at The Juilliard School. His uncle was pianist Peter Serkin, his grandfather was the pianist Rudolf Serkin, and his great-grandfather was the violinist Adolf Busch. He holds positions and residencies with nearly two dozen orchestras and music festivals in the US and abroad. His choral work, The New Colossus, was performed at the 2013 presidential inauguration of Barack Obama.
Joseph Genualdi is an American violinist. music He is best known as a chamber musician. He was the founding first violinist of The Muir String Quartet and Chicago String Quartet, also having performed for ten years with The Los Angeles Piano Quartet. He also founded The Chicago Chamber Musicians and served as Artistic Director of that organization from 1995 to 2012.
Marcy Rosen is an American cellist who is a member of the Mendelssohn Quartet, Los Angeles Times music critic Herbert Glass has called her "one of the intimate art's abiding treasures.".
Leslie Parnas was an American classical cellist. A prize winner at several international music competitions, he appeared as a soloist with orchestras around the world and performed and recorded a number of chamber works. His playing has been described as "characterized by a sure technique and an aggressive approach to phrasing". For a number of years, he taught at the Boston University School of Music.
Diedre Allison Irons is a Canadian-born concert pianist who has been based in New Zealand since 1977.
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