IRA LEVIN Conductor- Pianist
Ira Levin, a native of Chicago, is currently the chief conductor and artistic director of the Orchestra of the National Theater of Brazil, in the capital city of Brasilia.
He entered the Northwestern University School of Music’s program at age 12 under the pianistic tutelage of Donald Isaak. He continued his studies at the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, studying with Jorge Bolet, whose teaching assistant he later became. While at Curtis, he began studying conducting with Max Rudolf, had chamber music coachings with Mischa Schneider and Felix Galimir, appeared in performances of Leonard Bernstein’s “Age of Anxiety” conducted by the composer and participated in master classes with Sergiu Celibidache.
An accomplished pianist, Ira Levin was the first-prize winner of the American National Chopin Competition in 1980. He has concertized throughout the United States, South America, and Europe making radio and television appearances in Philadelphia, New York, Miami, Caracas, Edinburgh (BBC), Warsaw, and Lucerne. He continues to appear in recital and concert, often leading concertos from the keyboard as well.
Michael Gielen hired him as an assistant conductor at the Frankfurt Opera, where he remained from 1985-1988. He then went on to become principal conductor at the Bremen Opera 1988-1996 and principal conductor at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein, Duesseldorf-Duisburg 1996-2002. From 1994 until 1998 he was principal guest conductor at the Kassel Opera.
He has led opera and symphonic concerts throughout Europe, including appearances with the Dresden Staatskapelle, the Leipzig Gewandhaus, the Frankfurt Museum Orchestra, the Düsseldorf Symphony, the Duisburg Philharmonic, the Bruckner Orchestra of Linz, Badische Staatskapelle of Karlsruhe, the Dublin Opera, the Opera in Montpellier, the Norske Opera in Oslo and many other cities in Germany.
His operatic appearances include well over 1000 performances of 70 operas, including the major works of Mozart, Verdi, Wagner and R. Strauss as well as rarely heard works by Nielsen (Maskerade), Busoni (Arlecchino, Doktor Faust), Martin (The Tempest), Pfitzner (Palestrina), Prokofiev (The Fiery Angel) and Braunfels (Die Voegel). His symphonic repertoire likewise includes most of the standard repertoire as well as many lesser-known works. He has worked with innumerable internationally renowned conductors, instrumentalists, singers and stage directors. At the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in January of 2001 he conducted Richard Strauss’ complete Bürger als Edelmann, narrated by Sir Peter Ustinov, appearing again in the following season with Sir Peter in Duesseldorf with a program of Strauss’ Des Esels Schatten and The Carnival of the Animals.
In March 2002 Ira Levin made his highly successful debut at the Semper Opera, during the Dresden Opera Festival, conducting Tristan und Isolde on a few hour’s notice, with no rehearsal and to a glowing press. He was then invited back by the Semper Opera two days later to conduct Die Frau Ohne Schatten.
He conducted the Orchestra of the Hague Conservatory in concerts in The Hague, Utrecht and Amsterdam in October 2003. His conducting debut in Taiwan followed in January 2004 in two concert programs with the National Symphony Orchestra in Taipei. That same season he made his highly praised debut as pianist-conductor at the Teatro Colón with the Buenos Aires Philharmonic.
Following his overwhelming success conducting two back to back concerts in September 2001 he was immediately invited to assume the post of musical director of the Theatro Municipal and the Municipal Orchestra in Sao Paulo, Brazil, the first American to head one of the most important opera houses in South America. He held this post from 2002 -2005, bringing the Municipal and its orchestra national and international acclaim. In November of 2004 Ira Levin and the Municipal Orchestra of Sao Paulo won the coveted Carlos Gomes award for the best orchestra in Brazil.
On the operatic front he brought a new production of Jenufa in 2003 to Sao Paulo, the first performance ever in Brazil of a Janácek opera. His list of Sao Paulo productions also included Madame Butterfly, Falstaff, Salome, Le nozze di Figaro, Macbeth, Samson et Dalila, Don Carlos and Lohengrin. He conducted act 2 of Wagner’s Parsifal and Humperdinck’s Haensel und Gretel Brasilia in concert form in Brasilia.
He has often appeared as guest with the other major orchestras in Brazil including those in Belo Horizonte, Salvador, Campinas and, in Rio de Janiero, the Municipal Orchestra and Symphony Orchestra of Brazil. He led highly successful concert performances of Wagner’s Die Walkuere with the Sao Paulo Symphony Orchestra and soloists Violeta Urmana and Stephen Gould in 2006 and returned to the orchestra in 2008 as pianist/conductor. In April 2007 he conducted Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro to open the season of the Theatro Municipal in Rio de Janeiro.
Since 2002, his innovative programming has included many important Sao Paulo, Brasilia and Brazilian premieres of works by Nielsen, Sibelius, Busoni, Reger, Berlioz, Shostakovich, Martinu, Roussel, Roussel, Schmitt, Janácek, Corigliano and Schoenberg as well as neglected works of Haydn and Brahms. He conducted the world premiere performances of American-Cuban composer Michael Colina’s Los Caprichos in Brasilia and Sao Paulo in September 2008, and will also conduct it in South Korea in 2009. There have been Mahler cycles in Sao Paulo and Brasilia including Das Lied von der Erde, Kindertotenlieder and Symphonies #1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7 and 10, the last named the Brazilian premiere of the Cooke version. He conducted the Latin American premiere of Sibelius’s Kullervo in Brasilia in December of 2008.
In September 2006 he conducted a new production of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess at the Cape Town Opera, South Africa, to rave reviews. This was followed by an additional 13 performances with the Cape Town cast at the Norrlands Opera in Umea, Sweden, the first staged performances of the opera in Scandinavia. He was invited back by the Symphony Orchestra of Norrlands Opera in 2008 for concerts and to record the 1899 first edition of Bruckner’s Symphony # 6, the first modern recording of that version, for Lindoro records of Spain. This was released in April of 2009 and has already garnered rave reviews from some of the world’s leading Bruckner scholars and the editors of the most important Bruckner discography on the Internet. He will record the 1892 first edition of Bruckner’s Symphony # 2 with the same forces in February of 2010, also the first modern recording of that version. He will record works of Michael Colina with the London Symphony Orchestra in January, 2010
He returned to the Deutsche Oper am Rhein to conduct the premiere of Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk and Strauss’s Die Frau ohne Schatten in October-November of 2008 and and a revival of Boris Godunov in May, 2009. His South Korean debut will take place with his Brasilia orchestra in two concerts in Seoul in October of 2009. He will conduct Schumann’s “Scenes from Faust” in Lisbon in 2010.
An example of his extreme versatility took place in October of 2007, when, after world-renowned pianist Nelson Freire cancelled at short notice a performance of Brahms’ monumental piano concerto #2 in Brasilia, Levin played and conducted the work himself, never having played it before. His CD of “Ira Levin piano transcriptions” written and played by him, won the coveted “Bravo” award in Brazil as best classical CD of 2007. It was also named by Gregor Benko, founder of the International Piano Archives, as “best classical piano CD of 2007”. It was released in Brazil by the newly formed Brasil Meta Cultural and in Spain`by Lindoro Records. A second CD, Ira Levin Piano Transcriptions volume 2, will be released in 2010. Edition Tilli of Finland will publish a large collection of his piano transcriptions in 2009.