Robert David Levin (born October 13, 1947) is an American classical pianist, musicologist, and composer. He was a professor of music at Harvard University from 1994 to 2014 and the artistic director of the Sarasota Music Festival from 2007 to 2017.
Robert David Levin (born October 13, 1947) is an American classical pianist, musicologist, and composer. He was a professor of music at Harvard University from 1994 to 2014 and the artistic director of the Sarasota Music Festival from 2007 to 2017.
Born in Brooklyn, [1] Levin attended the Brooklyn Friends School and Andrew Jackson High School, and spent his junior year studying music with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. He attended Harvard, where he earned his Bachelor of Arts magna cum laude in 1968 with a thesis entitled The Unfinished Works of W. A. Mozart.
Levin took private lessons at Chatham Square Music School, Conservatoire National de Musique and the Fontainebleau School of Music in:
After graduating from Harvard, Levin was named head of the theory department at the Curtis Institute of Music. He was subsequently appointed associate professor of music and coordinator of theory instruction at the SUNY Purchase, and full professor in 1975. From 1986 to 1993, he served as professor of piano at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg in Germany. In 1993 he became professor of music at his alma mater, Harvard University, where he remains Professor Emeritus. In 1994 he was made Dwight P. Robinson Jr Professor of the Humanities at Harvard, and was a head tutor from 1998 to 2004. In 2012, as Humanitas Visiting Professor of chamber music at Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH), University of Cambridge, he gave two lectures, Improvising Mozart [2] and Composing Mozart [3] and a concert with Academy of Ancient Music. [4]
Levin's academic career has included teaching and tutoring performance practice (especially involving keyboard instruments and conducting, with an emphasis on the Classical period) in addition to music history and theory. He currently holds the position of Hogwood Fellow with the Academy of Ancient Music.
Levin has completed or reconstructed a number of eighteenth-century works, especially unfinished compositions by Mozart and Johann Sebastian Bach.
His completions of several unfinished Mozart works, including the Requiem in D minor and Great Mass in C minor , are considered his most important achievements. In the Mozart Requiem, he reconstructed an "Amen" fugue from Mozart's own sketches. John Eliot Gardiner commissioned him to write missing orchestral parts to five movements of cantatas by Bach, such as Ach! ich sehe, itzt, da ich zur Hochzeit gehe . As a performer, he is best known as a soloist in Classical-era piano concertos in general, and those of Mozart and Beethoven in particular, in which he robustly re-creates performance practice of the composers' time such as by improvising cadenzas and shorter embellishments in the composers' style.
Levin has composed several works, including the following:
A piano concerto, a type of concerto, is a solo composition in the classical music genre which is composed for piano accompanied by an orchestra or other large ensemble. Piano concertos are typically virtuosic showpieces which require an advanced level of technique. Piano concertos are typically written out in music notation, including sheet music for the pianist, orchestral parts, and a full score for the conductor.
Murray David Perahia is an American pianist and conductor. He has been considered one of the greatest living pianists. He was the first North American pianist to win the Leeds International Piano Competition, in 1972. Known as a leading interpreter of Bach, Handel, Scarlatti, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schumann, among other composers, Perahia has won numerous awards, including three Grammy Awards from a total of 18 nominations, and 9 Gramophone Awards in addition to its first and only "Piano Award".
E major is a major scale based on E, consisting of the pitches E, F♯, G♯, A, B, C♯, and D♯. Its key signature has four sharps. Its relative minor is C-sharp minor and its parallel minor is E minor. Its enharmonic equivalent, F-flat major, has six flats and the double-flat B, which makes that key less convenient to use.
C minor is a minor scale based on C, consisting of the pitches C, D, E♭, F, G, A♭, and B♭. Its key signature consists of three flats. Its relative major is E♭ major and its parallel major is C major.
A major is a major scale based on A, with the pitches A, B, C♯, D, E, F♯, and G♯. Its key signature has three sharps. Its relative minor is F-sharp minor and its parallel minor is A minor. The key of A major is the only key where the Neapolitan sixth chord on requires both a flat and a natural accidental.
E-flat major is a major scale based on E♭, consisting of the pitches E♭, F, G, A♭, B♭, C, and D. Its key signature has three flats. Its relative minor is C minor, and its parallel minor is E♭ minor,.
D minor is a minor scale based on D, consisting of the pitches D, E, F, G, A, B♭, and C. Its key signature has one flat. Its relative major is F major and its parallel major is D major.
Lillian Fuchs was an American violist, teacher and composer. She is considered to be among the finest instrumentalists of her time. She came from a musical family, and her brothers, Joseph Fuchs, a violinist, and Harry Fuchs, a cellist, performed with her on various recordings.
Leopold Koželuch was a Czech composer and music teacher.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's concertos for piano and orchestra are numbered from 1 to 27. The first four numbered concertos and three unnumbered concertos are early works that are arrangements of keyboard sonatas by various contemporary composers. Concertos 7 and 10 are compositions for three and two pianos respectively. The remaining twenty-one are original compositions for solo piano and orchestra. These works, many of which Mozart composed for himself to play in the Vienna concert series of 1784–86, held special importance for him.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart began his series of preserved piano concertos with four that he wrote in Salzburg at the age of 11 : K. 37 and 39–41. The autographs, all held by the Jagiellonian Library, Kraków, are dated by his father as having been completed in April and July of 1767. Although these works were long considered to be original, they are now known to be pasticcios of sonatas by various German composers. The works on which the concertos are based were largely published in Paris, and presumably Mozart and his family became acquainted with them or their composers during their visit to Paris in 1763–64.
Laszlo Varga was a Hungarian-born American cellist who had a worldwide status as a soloist, recording artist, and authoritative cello teacher.
A solo concerto is a musical form which features a single solo instrument with the melody line, accompanied by an orchestra. Traditionally, there are three movements in a solo concerto, consisting of a fast section, a slow and lyrical section, and then another fast section. However, there are many examples of concertos that do not conform to this plan.
Yona Ettlinger was a clarinetist who played and taught in Israel, France and England. Ettlinger is considered a prominent classical clarinetist of his generation, and one of Israel's notable instrumentalists. His musicianship and unique sound influenced the art of clarinet playing in Israel and Europe in the second half of the 20th century. Many clarinet soloists and orchestra players of different countries were among his students.
Paul McNulty is a builder of historical pianos, described by the New Grove as "famous for the high standard of [his] instruments." Within the community of builders, McNulty is noted for his efforts to extend the production of historically informed instruments later into history: while he has built many fortepianos in 18th-century style, he has also progressively sought to span the gap between the fortepiano and the fully modern piano that emerged around the last third of the 19th century. The expanding diversity of McNulty's productions has thus helped "provide an opportunity to extend keyboard performing practice to include the piano repertory of the 19th century".
The 50 Greatest Pieces of Classical Music is a compilation of classical works recorded by the London Philharmonic Orchestra with conductor David Parry. Recorded at Abbey Road Studios, Royal Festival Hall and Henry Wood Hall in London, the compilation was released in digital formats in November, 2009 and as a 4-CD set in 2011. The 50 Greatest Pieces of Classical Music has sold over 200,000 copies and spent over three days as one of the top 10 classical albums on iTunes.
Hooked on Classics is a classical crossover album recorded by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Louis Clark, released in 1981 by K-tel and distributed by RCA Records, part of the Hooked on Classics series. It was produced by Jeff Jarratt and Don Reedman.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| Artists | |
| People | |
| Other | |
