Bringing the brighest talent together in LA

Pre-concert lecture begins at 2:00pm

Program

Haydn: Piano Trio in C Major

Harbison: Variations for Clarinet

Mozart: Concerto No. 10 in E-Flat major for Two Pianos

Pianist Robert Levin, one of the world’s foremost interpreters of the music of Mozart, leads Conservatory Musicians an exciting performance.

About 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. His solo engagements include the orchestras of Atlanta, Berlin, Birmingham, Bos­ton, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Los Angeles, Mon­­­treal, Utah and Vienna on the Stein­­way with such conductors as James Conlon, Bernard Hai­tink, Sir Neville Mar­riner, Seiji Ozawa, Sir Simon Rattle and Joseph Silver­stein. On period pianos he has appeared with the Academy of Ancient Music, the English Baroque Soloists, the Handel & Haydn Society, the London Classical Players, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and the 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 a  long association with violist Kim Kashkash­­ian and appears frequently with his wife, pianist Ya-Fei Chuang, in duo recitals and with orchestra.  After more than a quarter century as an artist faculty member at the Sarasota Music Festival he succeeded Paul Wolfe as Artistic Director in 2007. 

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 (on five keyboard instru­ments) 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 Archiv, a Mozart concerto cycle with Chris­to­pher Hogwood and the Acad­emy of An­cient Music for Decca/Oiseau-Lyre and the first volume of a Mozart sonata cycle for Deutsche Harmonia Mundi.  A passionate advocate of new music, Robert Levin has commissioned and premiered a large number of works, including Joshua Fineberg’s Veils (2001), John Harbison’s Second Sonata (2003), Yehudi Wyner’s piano concerto Chiavi in mano (Pulitzer Prize, 2006), Bernard Rands’ Preludes (2007) and Thomas Oboe Lee’s Piano Concerto (2007).

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 Johann 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. A member of the Akademie für Mozartforschung, his comple­tions of Mozart fragments are published by Bärenreiter, Breitkopf & Härtel, Carus, Peters, and Wiener Urtext Edition, 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, flute and harp, oboe, horn and bassoon concertos and 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 worldwide.  The first of the four recordings of the work, by Philips, won the 1985 Grand Prix Interna­tional du Disque.

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.  His completion of the Mozart Mass in C minor, K. 427, commissioned by Carnegie Hall, was premiered by Rilling in New York in January 2005 and in Europe two months later.  Both works have since been performed worldwide and are published by Carus-Verlag.

Seating begins approximately 30 minutes prior to the lecture. In consideration of our artists and patrons in the hall, late seating will take place at the discretion of management. Certain programs are performed without intermission; therefore, no late seating can be offered at those concerts.

As a courtesy to the musicians and your fellow patrons, please turn off all pagers, mobile phones, watch alarms, or other electronic devices prior to the concert, and refrain from making noise (talking, coughing,  unwrapping candy) during the performance.

Everyone in your party, regardless of age, must be able to sit quietly through a 2 hour concert without disturbing other patrons or the artists. Ushers will ask parents whose children are noisy or uncomfortable to take them outside of the hall. If there is repeated disruption, The Colburn School reserves the right to revoke admission and refund your ticket price.

All patrons must have a ticket to enter the hall.  Information about accessibility is available by calling 213-621-1050.