Robert Levin

Pianist, composer, musicologist, and conductor Robert Levin was born in Brooklyn, New York on October 13, 1947. Educated at Brooklyn Friends School and Andrew Jackson High School, he spent a year in Paris studying with Nadia Boulanger, before attending Harvard University, where, in 1968, he received the Bachelor of Arts degree for his thesis on Mozart's unfinished works, of which he was to become a world-renowned specialist. He continued his training, taking lessons in the USA and France with numerous teachers including the Casadesus brothers (Jean and Robert), Clifford Curzon (piano), Seymour Bernstein (solfeggio), Suzanne Bloch (counterpoint), Stefan Wolpe (composition), and Eleazar de Carvalho (conducting). He began his teaching career at the Curtis Institute, where he was appointed head of the music theory department, then at New York's Purchase University as associate professor in 1975, at the Hochschule für Musik in Freiburg (Germany) from 1986 to 1993, and at Harvard, where he is professor emeritus. Alongside this activity, Robert Levin established his position as a concert artist through recitals and recordings. He has collaborated with violist Kim Kashkashian on collections devoted to Hindemith, Shostakovich, and Kurtág (for ECM New Series), with Christopher Hogwood on a series of Mozart concertos on period instruments (for L'Oiseau-Lyre), and with John Eliot Gardiner on Beethoven concertos (for Archiv Produktion). While he has also worked on works by composers such as J. S. Bach, Haydn, Mendelssohn, Schubert, Schumann, and Brahms, Robert Levin is best known for his work on the completion and reconstruction of fragments left by Mozart, such as the Requiem, K. 626, the Great Mass in C minor, K. 627, and various other unfinished pieces. In 2022, his complete Mozart: The Piano Sonatas, recorded on the composer's fortepiano at the Salzburg Mozarteum, was a critically acclaimed premiere. This achievement was followed by a series of Mozart concertos recorded for The Academy of Ancient Music label including 2023’s Mozart: Piano Concertos No. 5 & Church Sonata No. 17, Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 7 & 10, and Mozart: Piano Concertos Nos. 21 & 24.

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