arts & entertainment

Transforming Hearts

Classical pianist Robert Levin uses music to communicate
across the spectrum of human emotions.

Suzanne Chessler
Contributing Writer

R

obert Levin, a world-touring
pianist and composer who also
writes about music and teaches
at Harvard, feels perfectly comfortable per-
forming the classics in a synagogue instead
of a concert hall.
Levin, raised in a family that encouraged
the early development of his musical talents
and imparted a sense of universal Jewish
values, will perform Beethoven's "Emperor"
concerto Thursday evening, March 22, at
Congregation Shaarey Zedek in Southfield.
He will be joined by the Detroit
Symphony Orchestra as part of its
Neighborhood Concert Series.
"I think the main purpose of perfor-
mance is communication," explains the
musician, 64, who discussed career and
family during a recent phone conversation
from his base in Boston. -
"To me the venue is less important than
the possibility of reaching out to fellow
human beings and transforming their
lives by presenting a message that goes
deep into their hearts and spirits.
"Often, an unconventional venue is
more effective in transmitting that mes-
sage than the more formal venue of the
concert hall. I'm entirely in favor of meet-
ing people where they are and where they
feel most comfortable
Levin will be part of a program con-
ducted by Nicholas McGegan. Other pieces
include Johnson's Lift Et/ Voice and Sing
and Mozart's Don Giovanni Overture and
Symphony No. 38.

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1 4..
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Nate Bloom
Special to the Jewish News

La

Dancing Returns
iga The
14th season of ABC's Dancing with

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the Stars starts on Monday, March
19, at 8 p.m. Melissa Gilbert, 47, of
Little House fame, is the
sole "Jewish" contes-
tant. Gilbert's adoptive
41:10
mother is Jewish, and
the actress, who grew up
celebrating Jewish holi-
days, wed one of her two
Gilbert
(non-Jewish) ex-husbands
in a Jewish ceremony. On the other
hand, she calls herself "Jew—ish" in her
recent autobiography because she had
no religious training, her family also cel-
ebrated Christmas and she discovered,
as an adult, that her mother never had
her formally converted to Judaism.
Also dancing is William Levy, a beef-

50

March 15 • 2012

"The Beethoven concerto is one of the
real touchstones of the literature Levin
says. "It's a monumental, heroic piece and
shows Beethoven's personality in the most
vivid way.
"Playing that iconic work is tremen-
dously exciting. With its radiance and lyri-
cism, it's what people think of when they
think of Beethoven. The piece covers a
vast range of expression and represents, as
well as anything, the reason anyone would
want to be a pianist!"
While Levin's parents introduced him to
a variety of musical styles through record-
ings, the musicians cornet-playing uncle,
Benjamin Spieler, became the "guardian
angel" of his nephew's life as a musician.
"My uncle tested me and discovered I
had perfect pitch',' recalls Levin, who sang to
recordings at age 2 and started regular piano
training at age 5."He sought teachers for me,
financed my education and paid the bills for
the huge music library I have today'
That education, moving into com-
position, included studies with Nadia
Boulanger in France before entry into
Harvard at 16 and then the experience of a
life-changing request.
"A fellow student asked if I would play
the organ in a performance of the Mozart
Requiem and finish the [unfinished]
fugue so they could perform it as weir
he recalls. "I did a version, and afterward,
I started to get interested in the idea of
unfinished works by Mozart, who died
while working on the Requiem.
"I discovered there was no composer in
history who left more substantial works
uncompleted. There were more than 140

cake actor who was born in Cuba and
stars in Spanish-language soap operas.
Levy's paternal grandfather is Jewish.
Levy was raised without religion but
converted to Catholicism in 2009.

New Flicks

Opening Friday, March 16:
Jonah Hill, 28, co-wrote and co-stars
in the action comedy 21 Jump Street.
He and Channing Tatum play cops who
go undercover at a local high school to
investigate a violent drug ring. Dave
Franco, 26, actor James Franco's
younger brother, plays a tree-hugging
drug dealer.
Jason Segel, 32, co-stars as the title
character in the gentle comedy-drama
Jeff Who Lives At Home, about a slack-
er who spends his days in his mother's
basement. When he ventures out one
day, he chances to discover interesting
things about his brother (Ed Helms)

musical torsos, and at that point, I decided to
write a thesis about the subject:'
Levin put on a concert in conjunction
with the thesis, received favorable reviews
and drew requests that set him on a
career-long track of finishing other classi-
cal compositions.
Levin, who headed theory studies at
Philadelphia's Curtis Institute of Music as
soon as he graduated from Harvard, quickly
built an international concert career.
"Fifteen years ago, I got interested
in period pianos at the suggestion of a
friend, and both my wife (pianist Ya-Fei
Chuang) and I play duos on these instru-
ments as well as Steinways," he says.
After teaching at Curtis, Levin suc-
cessively moved on to the School of the
Arts at the State University of New York,
the Freiburg Conservatory of Music in
Germany and Harvard, where he remains
a professor of performance studies.
His own upcoming performances soon
will take him to St. Louis, New York, San
Francisco, Aspen, England and Germany,
with time set aside for writing articles and
book chapters as well as editing music for
publication.
Levin, artistic director of the Sarasota
Music Festival, most recently recorded the
music of French composer Henri Dutilleux.
Soon he will be recording Mozart works
using the composer's own piano in Salzburg.
Levin has a regular presence in Israel,
where he will be working with the Israel
Camerata in April and where he also is a
juror for the Arthur Rubinstein International
Master Piano Coinpetition.
In 1993, during his first professional

and his mother (Susan Sarandon).
Opening Friday, March 23:
Joshua Marston,
43, who directed and
co - wrote Maria Full of
Grace (2004), about a
Colombian woman lured
into smuggling drugs into
America, has a new film,
The Forgiveness of Blood,
which he directed and co-wrote. The
Albanian-language movie is about a
family caught up in a blood feud.

Playing Christian

Airing 10 p.m. Sundays on ABC is the
new series GCB, which derives its title
from the novel Good Christian Bitches.
The show follows the lives of five mid-
dle-aged Dallas women who attended
high school together. The producer is
Darren Star (Sex in the City), 50.
Native Detroiter Miriam Shor, 40,

Robert Levin: "I think the message that
music brings strengthens us, deep-

ens us and reminds us of our capacity
to experience joy as well as despair,
anguish and hope."

visit, he made the choice of keeping his
performance commitment instead of leav-
ing to avoid repeated rocket attacks preva-
lent at the time.
"When you're in a situation of danger, you
learn things about your own character that
you might not otherwise know;' Levin says.
"I have a deep connection with Israel and its
aspirations, and that is very important to me.
"We live in very troubled times, and for
the Jewish people there has never been a
time in which our very right to exist has not
been challenged.
"[In that context], I think the message that
music brings strengthens us, deepens us and
reminds us of our capacity to experience
joy as well as despair, anguish and hope.
"Bringing that message to my fellow
human beings, I hope to inspire exuber-
ance and optimism and give a substantial
reason to carry on eagerly" 0

Robert Levin performs with the
Detroit Symphony Orchestra at
7:30 p.m. Thursday, March 22, at
Congregation Shaarey Zedek, 27375
Bell Road, Southfield. $28.50. (313)
576-5100; www.detroitsymphony.com .

plays Cricket Caruth-
Reilly, a tough-as-nails
CEO whose husband is
secretly gay. The actress,
who identifies as Jewish
and speaks Yiddish, is
Shor
the daughter of a Jewish
father and a non-Jewish
mother. Her parents split up when she
was young, and she grew up with her
dad in Ferndale and her mom in Italy.

Mazel Toy

Actress Elizabeth Berkley, 39, and
her husband, artist Greg Lauren, 42,
made public on March 5 that they are
expecting their first child. Berkley,
who was raised in Farmington Hills,
wed Lauren in a huge Jewish wedding
in 2003. Greg's uncle, Ralph Lauren,
72, designed Berkley's wedding dress.
Greg's father, Jerry, is Ralph's broth-
er and business partner. ❑