Autograph manuscript of Mozart’s Piano Sonata in F Major. Reprinted by permission of Biblioteka Jagiellonska. An Evening with Robert Levin Introduction by Lewis Lockwood This presentation was given at the 1897th Stated Meeting, held at the House of the Academy on December 2, 2005. Robert Levin’s presentation included a musical performance of works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Arnold Schoenberg. Robert Levin is Dwight P. Robinson, Jr. Professor had not played this rondo for seven years, he and rondo on Sunday afternoon. Then he of the Humanities at Harvard University. He has relearned it in a day and a half and played it relearned the Beethoven Second, which he been a Fellow of the American Academy since that Friday evening. All was well, if a little hadn’t played in four years, and did both 2000. frantic. Beethoven concertos with the bso at the Tuesday concert to loud applause. Lewis Lockwood, a Fellow of the American Acad- The next morning, the Boston Symphony emy since 1984, is Fanny Peabody Professor of Orchestra called and asked Levin if he could This was a single memorable episode in the Music, Emeritus, at Harvard University. possibly step in to play the Beethoven Fourth career of a colleague whom I regard as one Piano Concerto that night since Alfred Bren- of the most gifted and versatile musicians del, the scheduled pianist, had injured his of our time–but it doesn’t suggest the full Lewis Lockwood back. Brendel was also supposed to play the range of his activities. For many years, Robert Beethoven Second Concerto, but the bso Levin has appeared as concerto soloist with magnanimously felt that two concertos was major orchestras, as well as recital pianist, On a Friday and Sunday in late April 2001, more than they should ask for in an emer- playing a repertoire that stretches from Bach Robert Levin was scheduled to play the gency situation, so they would substitute a to Harbison and Wyner. He also plays with Mozart C Major Piano Concerto, K. 467, and symphony instead. Levin rushed over to chamber music ensembles all over the world the obbligato piano part to a Mozart Concert Symphony Hall for a 10:30 a.m. rehearsal and has made many recordings. And he often Aria part, K. 505, with the Handel and Haydn and ran through the Fourth Concerto to Seiji gives piano concerts with his wife, Ya-Fei Society at Boston’s Symphony Hall. But on Ozawa’s satisfaction. Then Seiji said, “You Chuang. Wednesday of that week, the singer Dom- can also do the Second Concerto on Tuesday As concerto soloist, Levin regularly impro- inique Labelle had to cancel, and so conduc- night, yes?” So Levin played the Beethoven vises his cadenzas and adds improvised em- tor Christopher Hogwood asked Levin to Fourth Concerto with the bso Saturday bellishments, building on years of close study play k. 386, a Mozart Rondo for Piano and night, and went back to the Handel and of the performance practices of earlier times. Orchestra, instead. Though Robert Levin Haydn Society to play the Mozart concerto Bulletin of the American Academy Spring 2006 39 All his knowledge is balanced by an innate When we think about Mozart’s early son- The manuscript of the six sonatas is a very ability to realize the beauty of a Mozartian atas, we might be tempted to regard them as interesting document indeed. The ½rst move- or Schubertian line. Mozart scholarship the rather preliminary essays of a composer ment of the ½rst sonata is missing, but it is knows Robert Levin as a full-time, full- who is not yet entirely a master. After all, known to have been written on a different fledged professional colleague, who has when Mozart wrote these pieces, he was kind of paper from all of the rest. Apart from written a number of articles and book nineteen, and one wonders how seriously that ½rst movement, these six sonatas are chapters on Mozart and related subjects, one should take the work of a nineteen-year- written out one after the other: Mozart plus liner notes for recordings of works old. (Of course, if that person’s name is Felix ½nishes the last movement of one sonata from Bach to Debussy. Wherever you look Mendelssohn, we ought to take him rather on the front side of a sheet of paper and in Mozart scholarship, Levin is there– seriously indeed, because anyone who could goes right on with the next one on the back, articulate, informed, and with a terrifying write the octet at the age of sixteen has pretty suggesting that this was probably not the memory. His completions of un½nished much gone, as the people in Kansas City say, ½rst time he set this music to paper. In the Mozart works are especially well known. about as far as he can go. It is daunting to case of the last sonata, however, there is They began with his Harvard undergraduate imagine someone like Mendelssohn, whose thesis of 1968 entitled “The Un½nished Works achievements were so spectacular by the When we think about of W. A. Mozart.” Most recently they include time he was a mid-teenager–he wrote the the great Mozart C Minor Mass, K. 427, pre- Midsummer Night’s Dream overture and Mozart’s early sonatas, we miered last January, and the celebrated scherzo when he was seventeen–that he Mozart Requiem, which has been performed spent his maturity in agonizing self-doubt might be tempted to regard many times. His reconstruction of the Sym- and self-criticism. In fact, he could not bring phonie Concertante for Winds, ½rst heard in himself to publish the “Italian” symphony them as the rather prelimi- Salzburg, is now the standard version. because he thought it simply wasn’t good enough. I think we all agree that it’s rather nary essays of a composer From my own vantage point as a scholar, I good and that we are very happy to hear it have pro½ted greatly from his insights both frequently.) who is not yet entirely a in conversations and in his critical reading of my work. When Levin graduated summa K. 279 and K. 280 were the ½rst in a set of six master. After all, when cum laude from Harvard in 1968 at age twen- sonatas. It’s rather bizarre that they were the ty, Rudolph Serkin invited him to become ½rst when you consider the fact that, from Mozart wrote these pieces, head of the Theory Department at the Curtis the age of seven, this little tot was being he was nineteen . Institute. After ½ve years at Curtis, he went trumpeted as a great genius, a prodigy of suny nature who was regularly taken by his father on to full-time teaching positions at some indication that, at a certain stage, he to be presented to all of the courts of Europe, Purchase and at the Staatliche Hochschule began to take more risks about how soon he or any place where a snuff box stuffed with für Müsik in Freiburg. In 1993 he returned to would write something down. The last sonata gold coins could be taken home as a souvenir. Harvard and, a year later, became Dwight P. begins with quite a bit of the ½rst movement, Consider the frontispiece of his Opus One– Robinson, Jr. Professor of the Humanities. which he then thoroughly crosses out and SONATAS FOR THE HARPSICHORD/ Which Somehow Levin also managed to hold down replaces with a ½nal version. the all-important role of department head can be played with Violin Accompaniment / tutor for many years. He regularly coaches Dedicated / TO MADAME VICTOIRE / DE What would cause Mozart to reject part of a chamber music and gives courses on perfor- FRANCE / By J. G. Wolfgang Mozart of composition that is in a relatively polished mance and analysis as well as general courses Salzburg / Age 7 / OPUS THE FIRST 1–or his state? In the case of Mozart, we do not have on classical and swing music. Suf½ce it to say Opus Two (Agé de neuf ans). He composed a plenitude of sketches as we have for Bee- that he is a musician of prodigious talent, an these keyboard sonatas with an obbligato thoven, where once one has ½gured out how extraordinary colleague, and a remarkably violin part, but real sonatas for the keyboard, to read Beethoven’s handwriting, one has gifted human being. without an adjunct violin or flute, did not the opportunity to follow layers of gestation issue from his pen until he was nearly –all sorts of dead ends, blind alleys, im- twenty–a very surprising fact. provements, dry runs, new approaches. In a letter to his father about the opera Idomeneo, If Mozart is playing all of the time, what is Robert Levin Mozart declared, “Everything is composed, he playing? Why shouldn’t he be playing his but nothing is written down.” But we must own music? When you realize that the ½rst ne scarcely knows what to do after a be careful about this issue. Eight years after O original concerto that Mozart composed buildup like that, so I guess I should proceed he died, Mozart’s widow destroyed about 90 dates from his seventeenth year, there are to the subject at hand–which, on the one percent of his sketches, feeling that they had questions that scholars and musicians alike hand, is completely coincidental and, on the no value. (Maybe they had no value to her, need to ask about the growth of Mozart’s other hand, is anything but: Why are the but I think we would have liked to look over vernacular and its connection with practical names of two sonatas–Piano Sonata in C his shoulder.) The only sketches that survived exigencies.