Robert Levin

The American pianist Robert Levin performs in Europe, North and South America, Australia, and Asia, in solo recitals, as a chamber musician, and with orchestras, including those from Atlanta, BBC, Berlin, Birmingham, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, La Scala, Los Angeles, Montreal, Philadelphia, Toronto, and Vienna, under conductors such as Semyon Bychkov, James Conlon, Bernard Haitink, Sir Charles Mackerras, Sir Neville Marriner, Seiji Ozawa, and Sir Simon Rattle on modern concert pianos. He also performs with the Academy of Ancient Music, La Chambre Philharmonique, the English Baroque Soloists, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique under Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Christopher Hogwood, Emmanuel Krivine, Nicholas McGegan, and Sir Roger Norrington on historical instruments. He is a regular at the festivals of Sarasota, Oregon Bach, Tanglewood, Ravinia, Hollywood, Bremen, and the Salzburg Mozart Week. As a chamber musician, he has a long-standing duo with violist Kim Kashkashian and often performs with his wife, pianist Ya-Fei Chuang. Since 2007, he has been the Artistic Director of the Sarasota Music Festival, where he has participated since 1979. His revival of the practice of improvising cadenzas and ornaments in Viennese Classicism is recognized worldwide. Recordings have been released on labels such as Archiv, CRI, Decca/Oiseau-Lyre, Deutsche Grammophon, ECM, Hänssler Classic, Klavierfestival Ruhr, New York Philomusica, Philips, and SONY Classical, including complete recordings of Mozart's piano concertos with Christopher Hogwood and The Academy of Ancient Music (Decca/Oiseau-Lyre) and Beethoven's piano concertos with John Eliot Gardiner and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique (DG Archiv). For the Bach Year 2000, Hänssler Classics released recordings of all the harpsichord concertos with Helmuth Rilling, the Well-Tempered Clavier (on five different instruments), and the English Suites (on Steinway) as part of the Bach Academy Edition, which encompasses the complete works of the Leipzig Thomaskantor on 172 CDs.

A passionate advocate for new music, Robert Levin has undertaken numerous commissions and premieres, including "Paysage au clair de lune" by Denisov, "Veils" (2001) by Joshua Feinberg, the 2nd Piano Sonata by John Harbison (2003), the piano concerto "Chiavi in mano" by Yehudi Wyner (2005, Pulitzer Prize 2006), the Preludes by Bernard Rands (2007), and the piano concerto by Thomas Oboe Lee (2007). In 2010, his complete recording of the piano works of Henri Dutilleux was released by ECM (Star of the Month in Fono Forum). Upcoming releases include recordings of Bernard Rands' Preludes on Bridge Records and the complete works for piano and cello by Beethoven on historical instruments with Steven Isserlis.

Robert Levin initially studied piano with Louis Martin and composition with Stefan Wolpe in New York. As a teenager, he received lessons from Nadia Boulanger in Paris and Fontainebleau. Upon completing his studies at Harvard University, the twenty-year-old was invited by Rudolf Serkin to lead the music theory department at the Curtis Institute of Philadelphia. From 1972 to 1986, he held a professorship at the State University of New York/Purchase. After seven years as a piano professor at the State University of Music in Freiburg im Breisgau, Levin was appointed professor of humanities at Harvard in 1993, where he served for twenty years. In 1979, at the request of Nadia Boulanger, he directed the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau, where he worked as a professor until 1983. He is the president of the International Johann Sebastian Bach Competition and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

In addition to his concert activities, Robert Levin is a music theorist and Mozart researcher. His completions of unfinished Mozart compositions have been published by Bärenreiter, Breitkopf & Härtel, Carus, G. Henle, Peters, and Wiener Urtext Edition, recorded, and performed worldwide. His cadenzas for Mozart's violin concertos were recorded by Gidon Kremer with Nikolaus Harnoncourt and the Vienna Philharmonic and published by Universal Edition Vienna; cadenzas for Mozart's wind concertos, Beethoven's violin concerto, and viola concertos by Hoffmeister and Stamitz have been published by G. Henle. His reconstruction of the wind concertante KV 297B was premiered by the Vienna Philharmonic during the Salzburg Mozart Week and has been recorded several times (Grand Prix du Disque). The premiere of Levin's completion of the Requiem by Helmuth Rilling at the European Music Festival Stuttgart 1991 was met with ovations, has since been published, recorded multiple times, and performed worldwide. In January 2005, Helmuth Rilling conducted the premiere of Levin's completion of Mozart's C minor Mass - a commission by Carnegie Hall New York. Both have been published by Carus.