ROSINA LHEVINNE MOZART PIANO CONCERTO NO 21 vinyl record
(ROSINA LHEVINNE
MOZART PIANO CONCERTO NO 21
Label: C...)
ROSINA LHEVINNE
MOZART PIANO CONCERTO NO 21
Label: COLUMBIA RECORDS
Format: 33 rpm 12" LP stereo
Country: United States
Vinyl Condition: VG+
Cover Condition: VG
Year Released: unknown
LP Quantity: 1
Catalog #: CS 6182
Other Info:
• Writing on front cover
• Original insert inner sleeve
• IN C MAJOR, K. 467
JUILLARD ORCHESTRA
JEAN MOREL
Inventory Number: 07-K-10
Rosina Lhevinne Plays Chopin Piano Concerto No 1+ Schumann Overture Scherzo and Finale for Orchestra op 52 (Vanguard)
(Hearing this disc is like time-travel. Rosina Lhévinne ma...)
Hearing this disc is like time-travel. Rosina Lhévinne made this recording to celebrate her 80th birthday. She was a famous piano teacher (of Van Cliburn, among others), but seldom played in public after the 1940s. She hadn't lost a thing, though. The way she plays Chopin comes from a more gracious era, when people could take the time to say something without hurry. Lhévinne's tone, phrasing, and songful expression produce the type of music we usually hear only on scratchy old recordings, but here it is in excellent stereo. John Barnett and the orchestra support the soloist discreetly, then step out front for a raucous version of the little-known Schumann. --Leslie Gerber
Basic Principles in Pianoforte Playing (Dover Books on Music)
(
This little book, written at the height of his career b...)
This little book, written at the height of his career by Josef Lhevinne, the "inward poet of the piano," is a clear statement of principles based on his lifelong experience in performance and teaching. Lhevinne was, with Rachmaninoff, Schnabel, and Hoffman, one of the great modern masters, and was the first artist invited to teach at the newly formed Julliard Graduate School of Music.
Technique, through essential, must be subordinate to musical understanding. Complete knowledge of scales, apprehended not mechanically but musically; understanding of the uses of rests and silence, which Mozart considered the greatest effect in music; a feeling for rhythm and training of the ear; these are the basic elements of a thorough grounding in musicianship and are accordingly emphasized in the opening chapters.
The heart of the book is devoted to the attainment of a beautiful tone. Anyone who has heard Lhevinne play or has listened to one of his recordings will know how great were his achievements in that area. The secret lay, at least in part, in the technique he called "the arm floating in air," and in the use of the wrists as natural shock absorbers. The achievement of varieties of tone, of the singing, ringing tone, of brilliancy, of delicacy, and of power are all explained in terms of a careful analysis of the ways in which the fingers, hand, wrist, arm, and indeed the whole body function in striking the keys. There are further remarks about how to get a clear staccato and an unblurred legato, about the dangers of undue emphasis on memorization and the need for variety in practicing, and special comments on the use of the pedal, which should be employed with as much precision as the keys.
Throughout, specific musical examples are presented as illustrations. The author draws not only upon his own experiences and methods, but upon the examples of Anton Rubenstein and of his teacher, Safonoff, for this remarkably lucid and concise formulation of basic principles.
Rosina Lhevinne was a Ukranian-born American pianist and teacher.
Background
Rosina Lhevinne was born Rosina Bessie on March 29, 1880 in Kiev, Ukraine, the younger of two children of Jacques Bessie, a Dutch diamond merchant, and Maria Katch. There were violent anti-Semitic riots in Kiev during Rosina's first year, and the Jewish Bessie family was fortunate to be permitted to move to Moscow in 1881 or 1882. Rosina was seriously stricken with diphtheria in 1884, and were it not for her mother's insistence that the doctors perform a risky tracheotomy (a new and untested procedure at that time), she would not have survived. An outcome of the "miracle" of her survival was that her mother was fiercely overprotective of Rosina throughout her early years. The Bessies lived a cultured and relatively comfortable life. Both parents were amateur pianists, and their apartment housed two grand pianos.
Education
Rosina was educated at home by private tutors and was not allowed outside during the long Moscow winters. She began to study piano privately at the age of six with Antonin Galli, a Moscow Conservatory graduate. At the age of nine she was accepted into the lower school of the Moscow Conservatory, which had been established by Anton Rubinstein in 1862. Admission to the Conservatory was extremely competitive, especially for Jews, as Tsar Alexander III had established a quota limiting the number of Jews to no more than 3 percent of the student body. Rosina studied with S. M. Remesov in the lower school during her first year; when he suddenly took ill her temporary substitute teacher was fourteen-year-old Josef Lhévinne, who at that time was one of the Conservatory's top piano students. Among their other classmates at the Moscow Conservatory were Sergey Rachmaninoff and Aleksandr Scriabin. Rosina entered the upper school of the Conservatory at the age of twelve. Her primary teacher was Vasily Safonov. She graduated from the Moscow Conservatory in 1898 with a gold medal, the youngest woman ever to receive the school's highest honor.
Career
Rosina made her public orchestral debut at the age of fifteen, playing Chopin's Piano Concerto no. 1 in E Minor with the Conservatory Orchestra conducted by Safonov. After her marriage to Josef Lhevinne, they made their two-piano debut in Moscow, playing Anton Arensky's Second Suite for Two Pianos at a benefit concert. At this time Rosina made the decision to abandon her solo career and devote her energies to her husband's. In the fall of 1899 they relocated to Tiflis (Tbilisi), where he had been offered a position as professor at the local conservatory. They stayed there for two years. Although life in Tiflis was relatively comfortable, Rosina knew that Josef's career was stagnating in the remote Georgian city, and at her suggestion they relocated to Berlin. Her instincts about the best environment for her husband's career proved correct, and after a successful year in Berlin he was appointed to the faculty of the Moscow Conservatory.
Josef Lhévinne's first American tour was in 1906. It proved to be successful, and in the summer of 1906 Rosina prepared to join him for his second American tour. They planned an extended stopover in Paris, where the first of their two children was born. The Lhevinnes made their American two piano debut in Chicago on February 17, 1907. Their two-piano recitals consisted primarily of solo works played by Josef, with one or two works for two pianos played by both of them. Rosina would not play solo works at this time, again deferring to the primacy of her husband's career. Their two-piano performances were well received, and Madame Lhevinne was praised by critics and audiences for her technical proficiency and fine musicianship.
Josef Lhevinne continued to tour Europe and the United States from 1907 to 1914. The family made their permanent home in Wannsee, a suburb of Berlin. By this time he had amassed a large following of students, and she filled in for him as their primary teacher while he was away on tour. Because they were Russian citizens, when World War I broke out they were subjected to internment in Wannsee; this lasted from 1914 until 1919. As soon as the war was over the Lhevinnes immigrated to the United States and made their home in Kew Gardens, Queens, a neighborhood in New York City.
Josef began touring again, and although Rosina joined him for occasional two-piano recitals, she spent most of her time teaching in Queens. In 1924 the Lhevinnes joined the original faculty of the Juilliard Graduate School, which was established by the Juilliard Musical Foundation to provide advanced musical training for talented performers. They shared the same studio, and she was considered to be the better teacher by many of their students.
Her teaching and performing careers were to blossom after her husband's death. She moved from Queens to Manhattan to be closer to Juilliard, then located at 122d Street and Broadway, and expanded her roster of students. Her students, among them Van Cliburn, John Browning, Tong Il Han, Adele Marcus, Mischa Dichter, Ralph Votapek, Martin Canin, David Bar-Illan, and Jeffrey Siegel, won many of the national and international piano competitions. Beginning in 1956 she also taught at the Aspen Music School in Colorado during the summer months. Lhevinne also taught summer master classes at the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music from 1946 to 1955, at the University of California at Berkeley in 1961, and at the University of Southern California from 1971 to 1974.
Lhevinne embarked upon a solo performing career in 1956, at the age of seventy-six, playing Mozart's Concerto in C Major, K. 467 with the Aspen Festival Orchestra. During the next seasons she played solo works with orchestras across the country. In January 1963, a few months before her eighty-third birthday, Lhevinne performed Chopin's Piano Concerto no. 1 in E Minor with the New York Philharmonic under the direction of Leonard Bernstein for four performances. She taught at Juilliard until a few months before her death at the age of ninety-six at the home of her daughter in Glendale, California.
Rosina was known for her warmth and devotion to her students and she frequently was as concerned with their personal lives as with their musical training. Her dedication to her art and to the people with whom she shared it was unwavering.
Connections
Rosina married Josef Lhevinne in 1898. Her husband died of a heart attack in 1944. They had two children, Constantine Don and Marianna.