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RAVINIA’S STEANS MUSIC INSTITUTE
Robert Levin
, piano
Pianist and conductor Robert Levin has been heard 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, Neville Marriner, Seiji
Ozawa, 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 John Eliot Gardiner, Christopher
Hogwood, Charles Mackerras, Nicholas McGegan, and 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. The first recording in a Mozart piano sonata
cycle has also been released by Deutsche Harmonia Mundi. A passionate advocate of
new music, Robert Levin has commissioned and premiered a large number of works. He
is a renowned chamber musician and a noted theorist and musicologist. His completions
of Mozart fragments are published by Bärenreiter, Breitkopf & Härtel, Carus, Peters,
and Wiener Urtext Edition, and recorded and performed throughout the world.
Anton Nel
, piano
The Corinne Frada Pick Chair for Advanced Piano Studies
Anton Nel, winner of the 1987 Naumburg International Piano
Competition, continues to tour internationally as a recitalist,
concerto soloist, chamber musician, and teacher. Highlights in
America include concerts with the Cleveland Orchestra, San
Francisco and Seattle Symphonies, and the Chicago, Dallas,
and Detroit Symphony Orchestras, as well as recitals in major
venues from coast to coast. Overseas he has appeared at London’s
Wigmore Hall, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, and Tokyo’s Suntory Hall, among many
others. In addition, he has performed at summer music festivals on four continents. He
holds the Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Endowed Chair at the University of Texas–
Austin, and during the summers he regularly teaches at the Aspen Music Festival. He
made his Ravinia debut in 1987 playing Schumann’s Piano Concerto with the Chicago
Symphony Orchestra under Edo de Waart, and joined the RSMI faculty in 2014.
Howard Nelson
, physical therapy
Howard Nelson has been a physical therapist for 27 years. He
worked for 10 years at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New
York City. His physical therapy practice is focused on improving
the biomechanics of how people use their bodies; specifically,
he evaluates how postures and movements can be the cause of
injury and pain. In the last few years Howard has begun applying
movement system principles to musicians. He has worked with
musicians in Rolle and Verbier, Switzerland; Caramoor; Rice
University; Music Institute of Chicago; Manhattan School of Music; New England
Conservatory; Curtis Institute; and the Tokyo Viola and Menuhin Competitions. He
specializes in analyzing, aided by video, how movements and alignments in daily life,
such as while playing an instrument, can contribute to a pain problem. He uses his case
study of Pamela Frank to illustrate how movement habits can be injury provoking, and
how it is possible to retrain movement patterns to overcome injury. Additional potential
benefits of evaluating and treating movement system impairments is that using better
biomechanics can prevent injury and possibly improve performance.
Christoph Richter,
cello
The MacLean Family Chair
Christoph Richter, born in Bonn, Germany, is one of the most
sought-after musicians in Europe and regularly performs with
such artists as András Schiff, Isabelle Faust, Heinz Holliger.
Richter was formerly the cellist of the Cherubini String Quartet,
with whom he performed in the world’s most prestigious concert
halls. Following studies with André Navarra and Pierre Fournier,
he won prizes at international competitions and became in demand
as a soloist with leading orchestras. He has been principal cellist of the Cappella Andrea
Barca since its founding by András Schiff in 1999 and is a key participant in the Prussia
Cove International Musicians Seminar in Cornwall, England. Other international
festivals in which he is a regular participant include Ittingen, Marlboro, and Salzburg.
His strong interest in contemporary music has led him to work with such composers as
Penderecki, Kurtág, Henze, Lachenmann, Holliger, Reimann, and Widmann. Among
his recordings are works by Schumann and Holliger for ECM, concertos by Klengel
for CPO, Mozart’s Divertimento K. 563 for Naxos, and the Brahms Sextet Op. 36 for
Harmonia Mundi, which received France’s Diapason d’Or. He is professor of cello
at the Folkwang University in Essen, Germany, and the Royal Academy of Music in
London, and he teaches chamber music at the European Chamber Music Academy and
ChamberStudio in London.
Marcy Rosen
, cello
The MacLean Family Chair
Marcy Rosen has established herself as one of the most important
and respected artists of our day. She has performed in recital and
with orchestra throughout Canada, England, France, Italy, Japan,
the Netherlands, South America, Switzerland, and all fifty of
the United States. Sought after for her riveting and informative
Master Classes, she has been a guest of the Curtis Institute of
Music, the New England Conservatory, the San Francisco Conservatory, the Central
Conservatory in Beijing, China, the Seoul Arts Center in Korea and the Cartagena
International Music Festival in Colombia. During the 2017-18 season her new recording
with the pianist Lydia Artymiw of the complete works of Mendelssohn was released by
Bridge Records. In addition, she performed in New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San
Francisco, Montreal, Toronto, and many other cities across North America. Ms. Rosen
has collaborated with the world’s finest musicians, including Leon Fleisher, Richard
Goode, Andras Schiff, Mitsuko Uchida, Jonathan Biss, Peter Serkin, and Isaac Stern,
among others, and with the Juilliard, Johannes, Emerson, Daedelus and Orion Quartets.
She is a founding member of La Fenice as well as the Mendelssohn String Quartet. With
the Mendelssohn she was Artist-in-Residence at the North Carolina School of the Arts
and for nine years served as Blodgett-Artist-in-Residence at Harvard University. Since
first attending the Marlboro Festival in 1975, she has taken part in 23 “Musicians from
Marlboro” tours and has performed in concerts celebrating the 40th, 50th, and 60th
anniversaries of the festival. A graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music, Ms. Rosen is
currently professor of cello at the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College,
also serving as Artistic Director of the Chamber Music Live concert series. She also
serves on the faculty at the Mannes College of Music in New York City.
Uri Vardi
, Feldenkrais practitioner
Cellist Uri Vardi has performed as a recitalist, soloist, and
chamber player across the United States, Europe, Asia, South
America, and his native Israel. Born in Szeged, Hungary, Vardi
grew up on Kibbutz Kfar Hahoresh, Israel. He studied at the
Rubin Academy in Tel Aviv, was an Artist Diploma student at
Indiana University, and earned his master’s degree from Yale
University. His cello teachers have included János Starker, Aldo
Parisot, Eva Janzer, and Uzi Wiesel. Other influential musicians
in his life have been György Sebők, Rami Shevelov, Rachel Adonaylo, and Lorand
Fenyves. Vardi served as assistant principal cellist of the Israel Chamber Orchestra,
principal cellist of the Israel Sinfonietta, and was a founding member of the Sol-La-
Re String Quartet. In 1990, following an extensive teaching and performing career,
Vardi was appointed cello professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Vardi
is the founder and artistic director of the National Summer Cello Institute (NSCI). He
is regularly invited to perform and present workshops, seminars, and master classes at
major music schools, summer music festivals, and professional orchestras. Trained as a
Feldenkrais practitioner, Vardi focuses on the correlation between musical expression,
sound, body awareness, and movement in his teaching and performance.
PIANO AND STRINGS FACULTY
RSMI