Robert Levin

Robert Levin studied with Stefan Wolpe in New York and with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. Upon graduation he was invited by Rudolf Serkin to head the theory department of the Curtis Institute of Music; Levin was also Resident Director of the Conservatoire Américain in Fontainebleau from 1979 to 1986 before taking up a professorship in the piano department of Freiburg Musikhochschule. He is President of the Johann Sebastian Bach Competition in Leipzig, and currently Dwight P. Robinson, Jr. Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University. As a result of intense study of the original sources, Levin has published scholarly and musically well-informed completions of a number of works left unfinished by Mozart: for instance, the Requiem and the Mass in C Minor. He has performed worldwide and has made a number of recordings, including complete cycles of the Mozart and Beethoven piano concertos. Robert Levin is one of those rare double musical talents who are truly capable of combining theory and practice. More than just a piano-playing musicologist or a theorizing instrumentalist, Levin invariably merges virtuoso aplomb with well-informed scholarship in performances that captivate audiences far and wide. That has also clearly been the case in the great number of concerts, recitals and lectures Levin has given at the Ruhr Piano Festival ever since his first appearance here in 2006.