The American pianist Robert Levin has given recitals, chamber concerts and appeared as a concerto soloist throughout Europe and the United States.

 

Equally at home at the fortepiano, he has appeared with the Orchestra of the 18th Century under Frans Brüggen, the English Baroque Soloists under John Eliot Gardiner, the Handel & Haydn Society and the Academy of Ancient Music both under Christopher Hogwood, and with the London Classical Players under Roger Norrington. Levin is unique among today's pianists in his restoration of the Classical period practice of improvised embellishments and cadenzas; his Mozart and Beethoven performances, for example, have been hailed for their mastery of the Classical musical language.

 

Robert Levin studied piano with Louis Martin and composition with Stefan Wolpe in New York, and worked with Nadia Boulanger in Fontainebleau and Paris while he was still in high school. Upon his graduation from Harvard University, Levin was invited by Rudolf Serkin to head the theory department of the Curtis Institute. From 1979 to 1983 he was Resident Director of the Fontainebleau Conservatoire Américain at the request of Nadia Boulanger. In 1986 he became professor of piano at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany, a post he gave up in the autumn of 1993 to become Professor of Music at Harvard University.

 

A recognized Mozart scholar, Robert Levin´s completions of Mozart fragments have been published by Bärenreiter and Peters, recorded and performed throughout the world. His reconstruction of the Sinfonia Concertante for four wind instruments and orchestra, K. 297 B, was premièred by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra at the Salzburg "Mozartwoche" and has subsequently been performed worldwide. A monograph detailing the work´s history and the process of its reconstruction by Levin has been hailed as a musicological thriller. In August 1991, his new version of the Mozart Requiem was premiered by Helmuth Rilling at the European Music Festival in Stuttgart to a standing ovation.

 

Robert Levin's latest recording for Sony Classical's VIVARTE label features piano sonatas by Schubert (SK 53364), played on a Viennese instrument dating from 1825. He has previously been heard with clarinetist Charles Neidich in Mozart's "Kegelstatt Trio" (SK 53386) and in sonatas for clarinet and piano by Danzi, Mendelssohn and Weber (SK 64302), as well as with violinist Vera Beths and cellist Anner Bylsma in a recording of Haydn's four last piano trios (SK 53120) and various recordings with the american violist Kim Kashakasian for ECM.