ROCHESTER, N.Y.—Robert D. Levin, one of America’s leading keyboard players in the early instrument movement and best known as a Mozart pianist and scholar, will visit Eastman School of Music Thursday December 14 to deliver the inaugural lecture supported by the Glenn Watkins Lecture Fund. Levin’s talk, “The Challenges of Completing Mozart’s ‘C Minor Mass’” will take place at 4:30 p.m. Earlier in the day, Levin will conduct a piano master class. That evening, he will deliver a pre-concert talk just before the Eastman-Rochester Chorus/Philharmonia Chamber Orchestra concert set for 8 p.m. during which Levin’s recent completion of Mozart’s Mass in C Minor will be performed.
The Dwight P. Robinson Jr. Professor of Music at Harvard University, Levin is a noted musicologist, concert pianist and specialist in historical performance practice. He has appeared throughout the U.S., Europe, Australia and Asia with the orchestras of Berlin, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Los Angeles and Vienna. Renowned for his improvised embellishments and cadenzas in classical period repertoire, Levin has reconstructed several works that Mozart left incomplete, including the Mass in C Minor and the famous Requiem. He received an honorary doctorate from Eastman in 1996, serves as president of the International Johann Sebastian Bach Competition and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Levin’s visit to Eastman inaugurates an endowed series of all-school events supported by the Glenn Watkins Lecture Fund, which will bring to Eastman a biennial speaker of broad interest to students. Glenn Watkins received his Ph.D. in Musicology at Eastman in 1953 and in 1996, received Eastman’s Distinguished Alumnus Award. Professor emeritus of Music History and Musicology at the University of Michigan, Watkins is a specialist in Renaissance and 20th-century musical culture. Recipient of a Fulbright Award (England), an American Council of Learned Societies Grant, and Senior Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the University of Michigan Institute for the Humanities, he has published numerous books, articles, reviews and editions.
Robert D. Levin December 14 Events
12:30 – 2:30 p.m.
Piano Master Class
Eastman Theatre
4:30 – 5:30 p.m.
Lecture, “The Challenges of Completing Mozart’s ‘C Minor Mass’”
Eastman School Main Building, Room 404
7 – 7:25 p.m.
Pre-Concert Talk
Eastman School Main Building, Room 120
8 p.m.
Eastman-Rochester Chorus/Philharmonia Chamber Orchestra
Eastman Theatre
Kathryn Blomshield, soprano
Yvonne Douthat, mezzo-soprano
Jack Beetle, tenor
Andrew Bawden, baritone
William Weinert, conductor
Mozart: Mass in C Minor (completed by Robert Levin)
All events are free and open to the public. For more information, please call 585/274-1110 or visit esm.rochester.edu.