Beth Levin

Beth Levin (born December 17, 1950) is an American classical pianist in the Romantic tradition of her teachers Marian Filar, Rudolf Serkin, Leonard Shure, and Dorothy Taubman at the Taubman Institute. Levin is devoted to the highly expressive and demanding repertoire of Beethoven, Schumann, Chopin, Brahms, Rachmaninoff, and Ravel, as well as to the work of leading modernists such as Anders Eliasson, David Del Tredici, Alexander Goretzky, Louis Karchin, and Scott Wheeler.

Early influences Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Levin's fascination with music developed from the age of 3, when she first began piano lessons. Levin says: "Some of my earliest memories are of playing as my father sang. We were fortunate to have a brilliant pianist living just around the corner: Cecille Sharlip, who had emigrated from Europe to study at the Curtis Institute of Music. Sharlip guided me until I was 12, at which time she suggested I audition for the great Chopin interpreter Marian Filar, who was then teaching at the Settlement Music School (Philadelphia). I absorbed a sense of musical tradition that has never left me." Working with Filar, himself a former student of Walter Gieseking, led to Levin winning at the age of 12 an audition to perform with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Four years later, she again appeared with that orchestra.

Musical education At the age of 17, Levin successfully auditioned for Serkin, then a professor of piano and director of the Curtis Institute. Levin said: “Mr. Serkin was an inspiration the moment he walked into a room, a single word evoking the eloquence of a poem.”

Jeremy Eichler, in a review in The New York Times on June 10, 2005, described Levin's pianism thus: "Ms. Levin [keeps] the ear engaged with boldly inflected readings and an impressive ability to convey emotion without exhibition."