See Clarinetist Charles Neidich In Recital At Morse Recital Hall At The Juilliard School

The distinguished clarinetist Charles Neidich will be performing live with noted pianist Robert Levin at Morse Recital Hall at The Juilliard School (155 W. 65th St., New York, NY 10023) on Wednesday evening, January 31, 2024, 7:30 p.m. as part of the school's Daniel Saidenberg Faculty Recital Series. Highlights of the program will include the world premiere of Mr. Neidich's own composition Lament for basset clarinet in A and piano; and a U.S. premiere of Landscape by the Light of the Moon by Russian composer Edison Denisov. Mr. Neidich performs on a Grenser Bb clarinet, a Modern Bb clarinet, a Basset A Eb clarinet, and a Bass clarinet. Mr. Levin will perform on a Conrad Graf Fortepiano and a modern piano. Full program follows:

Carl Maria von Weber Grand Duo Concertant, Op. 48

Edison Denisov Landscape by the Light of the Moon (U.S. premiere)

Robert Schumann Sonata for Violin and Piano in D Minor, Op. 121 (Transcribed by Charles Neidich)

György Kurtág Capriccio for Solo Bass Clarinet

György Kurtág Words Have Become Unfaithful to Me

Ilsa Fromm Michaels Stimmungen Eines Fauns, op. 11

Charles Neidich Lament for basset clarinet in A and piano (world premiere)

Johannes Brahms Sonata for Clarinet and Piano in E-flat Major, Op. 120, No. 2

General admission of $25 and member tickets of $12.50 will be available online through the Juilliard website. The concert will also be live-streamed on the day of the performance on the event page. For further information, please visit clarinetist Charles Neidich's website.

Clarinetist and conductor Charles Neidich has gained worldwide recognition as one of the most mesmerizing virtuosos on his instrument. With a tone of hypnotic beauty and a dazzling technique, Mr. Neidich has received unanimous accolades from critics and fellow musicians both in the United States and abroad; but it is his musical intelligence in scores as diverse as Mozart and Elliott Carter that has earned for Mr. Neidich a unique place among clarinetists. In the words of The New Yorker, "He's an artist of uncommon merit - a master of his instrument and, beyond that, an interpreter who keeps listeners hanging on each phrase."

An ardent exponent of new music and a composer himself, he has expanded the technical and expressive possibilities of the clarinet and has championed the works of many of the world's most important composers. He is a leading performer on period instruments and has restored and reconstructed original versions of works written by composers ranging from Mozart to Copland.

With a growing discography to his credit, Mr. Neidich can be heard on the Chandos, Sony Classical, Sony Vivarte, Deutsche Grammophon, Musicmasters, Pantheon, and Bridge labels, and most recently in the Mozart Basset clarinet Concerto on historical instruments for Bremen Radio Hall Recordings. He is publishing editions of major clarinet and wind chamber music for Lauren Keiser Music and Southern Music, has made instructional videos for Play with a Pro, and together with Ayako Oshima publishes a monthly column in the Japanese magazine, Pipers.

Under Mr. Neidich's direction, along with his wife, fellow clarinetist Ayako Oshima, the popular Wa Concert Series, held at Tenri Cultural Institute, brings lesser-known works and composers to the attention of the international music community, synthesizing Mr. Neidich's lifetime of musical knowledge, exploration, and thoughtful reflection. In recent seasons, Mr. Neidich has added conducting to his musical accomplishments. He has guest-conducted throughout the country and continues to serve as conductor of the Queens College Chamber Orchestra with whom he has performed the works of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven in historically informed interpretations.

In wide demand as a soloist, Mr. Neidich has collaborated with several of the world's leading orchestras and ensembles, including the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Halle Staatsorchester, Orpheus, the St. Louis Symphony, Jacksonville Symphony, Pasadena Symphony, San Diego Symphony, New City Chamber Orchestra of San Francisco, the Yomiuri and Tokyo Philharmonic, Hyogo PAC Orchestra, Tafelmusik, the Juilliard, Guarneri, American, Mendelssohn, and Parker Quartets.

A native New Yorker of Belorussian and Greek descent, Charles Neidich studied with the famed pedagogue Leon Russianoff. He received a BA, cum laude, in anthropology from Yale University. In 1975 he was granted a
Fulbright grant for study in the former Soviet Union, and he attended the Moscow Conservatory for three years studying with Boris Dikov and Kirill Vinogradov.

In 1985, Mr. Neidich became the first clarinetist to win the Walter W. Naumburg Competition, which brought him to prominence as a soloist. He then taught at the Eastman School of Music, and during that tenure, joined the renowned New York Woodwind Quintet, an ensemble with which he still performs. His European honors include top prizes at the 1982 Munich International ARD Competition, the Geneva, and the Paris Accanthes International Competitions. Mr. Neidich has achieved recognition as a teacher in addition to his activities as a performer, and is currently a member of the artist faculties of CUNY Graduate School, The Juilliard School, the Manhattan School of Music, and the Mannes College of Music. He held the post of Associate Professor at the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College for many years. In 2004, he was awarded the William Schuman Award for performance and scholarship at The Juilliard School. The Kitakaruizawa Music Seminar, now in its 13th season, was co-founded by Mr. Neidich and Ms. Oshima. In 2018 he was awarded a lifetime membership in honor of his artistic achievements by the International Clarinet Society and a medal for lifetime achievement from the National Society of Arts and Letters.

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 recorded and performed world-wide completions of Mozart fragments are published by Bärenreiter, Breitkopf & Härtel, Carus, Peters, and Wiener Urtext Edition.

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