Education
Born in 1924 in Nanjing, China, Lee studied music in Lafayette, Indiana, then attended Harvard University, studying with Walter Piston, Irving Fine, and Tillman Merritt and was also a student at the Longy School of Music in the early 1940s. Following World World War II, he traveled to Paris where he studied music with Nadia Boulanger and was a friend of Douglas Allanbrook. In addition, he completed several unfinished piano works by Franz Schubert, and composed cadenzas for piano concertos by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven.
Career
He composed orchestral, chamber, piano, vocal, and film music He was also well known for his piano accompaniment. Lee was a visiting professor at Brandeis University, Cornell University, and Dartmouth College.
Lee"s first recordings were for the Valois label of Michel Bernstein.
He recorded, together with French pianist Christian Ivaldi, the complete works for four hands by Schubert for the label Arion. He was the pianist for the American violinist Paul Makanowitzki (1920-1998), the Dutch baritone Bernard Kruysen (1933-2000) and the French soprano Anne-Marie Rodde.
As a pianist, he toured on six continents and recorded 198 LPs and CDs since 1955, particularly of Schubert (including the complete sonatas), Debussy, Ravel, Charles Ives, Bartók, Stravinsky, Aaron Copland and Elliott Carter.