Name Lazare Levy Education Conservatoire de Paris | Role Composer | |
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Died September 20, 1964, Paris, France Similar People Monique Haas, Yves Nat, Henri Barda, Jean Hubeau, Marcel Ciampi | ||
Lazare Lévy plays Mozart Sonata in A minor K 310
Lazare Levy (sometimes seen in a hyphenated version: Lazare-Levy) (18 January 1882 – 20 September 1964) was an influential French pianist, organist, composer and pedagogue. As a virtuoso pianist he toured throughout Europe, in North Africa, Israel, the Soviet Union and Japan. He taught for many years at the Paris Conservatoire.
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Biography
Lazare Levy was born of French parents in Brussels, Belgium. After early lessons with an English piano teacher there, he entered the Paris Conservatoire at age 12 in 1894. The noted pedagogue Louis Diemer supervised the young boy's studies, and Levy received a Premier Prix in 1898. He also studied harmony with Albert Lavignac and counterpoint with Andre Gedalge. Among his comrades and early music partners were Alfredo Casella, Alfred Cortot, George Enescu, Pierre Monteux, Maurice Ravel, and Jacques Thibaud.
At age twenty, Levy made his debut recital at the Concerts Colonne, under Edouard Colonne' s own baton, in Schumann's A minor Piano Concerto. In the front row of Levy's earliest recitals was Camille Saint-Saens, who considered him to possess "that rare union of technical perfection and musicality."
Lazare Levy premiered works by French composers of his time, including Paul Dukas and Darius Milhaud. He was also an early champion of Isaac Albeniz, whose "Iberia" (Book I) he played in 1911.
In his twenty-fifth year, Levy co-authored a Methode Superieure for piano published by Diemer (whose assistant he became), though he would later advocate a much more personal and innovative piano technique, involving more hand and arm technique than pure finger technique, with the cushioned part of the fingers going deeply into the key.
Levy was a distinguished professor of piano at the Paris Conservatoire, first as a temporary teacher (1914–16 and 1920-3) and then as Cortot's successor (1923–40; reappointed 1944-53).
As a Jew in occupied France during the Second World War, his life was held in balance yet he survived only through constant movement and vigilance, hiding, adopting aliases and using false papers. The Conservatoire position he had held was nevertheless given to Marcel Ciampi and Levy never recovered it. His youngest son, Phillipe, a prominent resistance fighter, was betrayed to the Gestapo by two French Nazi collaborators, captured, then transferred to the Drancy concentration camp where he was recognised as a Jew and tortured by SS officer Alois Brunner.
Among his pupils were Agnelle Bundervoet, John Cage, Teodor Cosma, Marcel Dupre, Lukas Foss, Valentin Gheorghiu, Chieko Hara-Cassado, Monique Haas, Clara Haskil, Yuksel Koptagel, Oskar Morawetz, Michel Plasson, Georges Savaria, Kazimierz Serocki, Solomon, Andre Tchaikowsky, Henri Betti, and many other virtuosos mostly known in France nowadays. See: List of music students by teacher: K to M#Lazare Levy.
Lazare Levy died in 1964, aged 82.