Mozart: Unfinished Works for Piano and Violin, Completed by Robert Levin Robert Levin & Gérard Poulet

• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 - 1791), Robert Levin (b.1947):
• 1 Allegro en Sol Majeur, K. Anh. 47 10:16
• 2 Allegro en Si-Bemol Majeur, K. 372 08:01
• 3 Fantaisie en Ut Mineur, K. 396 09:38
• 4 Sonate en Ut Majeur, K. 403: 1. Allegro moderato 05:21
• 5 Sonate en Ut Majeur, K. 403: 2. Andante 03:10
• 6 Sonate en Ut Majeur, K. 403: 3. Allegretto 08:06
• 7 Allegro en La Majeur, K. Anh. 48: Allegro 10:07
• 8 Allegro en La Majeur, K. 50: Allegro 05:13
• 9 Allegro en Sol Majeur, K. Anh. 47 (Fragments): Allegro 01:03
• Total Runtime 01:00:55

Info for Mozart: Unfinished Works for Piano and Violin, Completed by Robert Levin

This recording is unique in many respects but most importantly because it allows us to hear, for the first time, works that Mozart left unfinished. But to reveal their true worth they had to be completed.

We will explore here to what extent this exercise is possible with Mozart. Because although he was an undisputed musical genius, perhaps the greatest of all time, things did not simply fall from the sky in a finished state. His abilities were obvious, as was his capacity to adapt to circumstance, but none of his music would have been created without the enormous amount of work he must have put in, together with an acute awareness of what he was doing.

It is true that there is no such thing as bad Mozart. But that does not mean every single note written by Mozart could only have been dictated to him by a God who saw him as the only one worthy of His gifts. By studying his music as deeply as possible, playing it with joy and talent, and having it constantly in one’s heart, we may begin to imagine, among other possibilities, what Mozart might have written at the point when he stopped. This is just what Robert Levin has done, who knows Mozart, or rather who knows Mozart’s music, better than anyone, and no doubt better than many of the composer’s contemporaries. Mozart himself recognised the collaborative relationship between performer and composer, saying it was necessary to "play every note with the required expression and taste so as to give the impression that the person playing and the composer are one and the same."

Robert Levin, piano
Gerard Poulet, violin

Robert Levin
Pianist and Conductor Robert Levin has performed throughout the United States, Europe, Australia and Asia. His solo engagements include the orchestras of Atlanta, Berlin, Birmingham, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Los Angeles, Montreal, Utah and Vienna on the Steinway with such conductors as Semyon Bychkov, James Conlon, Bernard Haitink, Sir Neville Marriner, Seiji Ozawa, Sir Simon Rattle and Esa-Pekka Salonen. On period pianos he has appeared with the Academy of Ancient Music, English Baroque Soloists, Handel & Haydn Society, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, with Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Christopher Hogwood, Sir Charles Mackerras, Nicholas McGegan, and Sir Roger Norrington.

Renowned for his improvised embellishments and cadenzas in Classical period repertoire, Robert Levin has made recordings for DG Archiv, CRI, Decca, Deutsche Grammophon, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, ECM, New York Philomusica, Nonesuch, Philips and SONY Classical. These include a Mozart concerto cycle for Decca; a Beethoven concerto cycle for DG Archiv (including the world premiere recording of Beethoven’s arrangement of the Fourth Concerto for piano and string quintet); and the complete Bach harpsichord concertos with Helmuth Rilling, as well as the six English Suites (on piano) and both books of the Well-Tempered Clavier (on five keyboard instruments) as part of Hänssler’s 172-CD Edition Bachakademie. ECM will be releasing his traversal of the Mozart piano sonatas on Mozart’s piano. He is a regular partner of cellist Steven Isserlis, with whom he recorded the complete piano and cello music of Beethoven, and pianist Ya-Fei Chuang, with whom he appears in recital and with orchestra. Earlier this year he toured Europe and the United States with violinist Hilary Hahn. A passionate advocate of new music, Robert Levin has commissioned and premiered a large number of works. He has recorded the complete piano music of Dutilleux for ECM and joined pianist Ursula Oppens in a CD of Bernard Rands’ piano music for Bridge. A renowned chamber musician, his completions of Mozart fragments are published by Bärenreiter, Breitkopf & Härtel, Carus, Peters, and Wiener Urtext Edition, and recorded and performed throughout the world.

Gerard Poulet
is a French violinist and teacher born (in Bayonne) on August 12, 1938. His father (Gaston Poulet), with whom he began his violin studies, was also a violinist. His career has been mainly spent in Europe though he has performed in almost every continent. He entered the Paris Conservatory at age 11 and graduated at age 12. His main teacher there was Andre Asselin. As did Bronislaw Huberman before him, he had many teachers: Zino Francescatti, Nathan Milstein, Yehudi Menuhin, and Henryk Szeryng were among them. Poulet made his debut at age 12 playing the Mendelssohn concerto. He recorded the third concerto of Mozart at age 14 with his father on the podium. At age 18, he won the Paganini Competition in Genoa, Italy. As do all winners of that competition, he got to play Paganini’s violin, the famous Cannone. He later dedicated a good deal of time to teaching at the National Conservatory in Paris. In 2007, he began teaching at the University of Arts in Tokyo. He might not be there any longer since I could not locate his name on any faculty roster. Poulet played the 1720 Henri Marteau Guarnerius from 1975 until about 1988 and that violin is supposedly now owned by Maxim Vengerov, though I could not find a single public source to confirm that. His most famous pupil is most probably Renaud Capucon.

Booklet for Mozart: Unfinished Works for Piano and Violin, Completed by Robert Levin