Mischa Levitski

Mischa Levitski (Kremenchuk, Ukraine, Russian Empire 25 May 1898 - Avon-by-the-Sea, New Jersey, 2 January 1941) was one of the most popular American classical pianists of his era and a composer. His most familiar piece is "The Enchanted Nymph" a Chopinesque piece of salon music. He also published his cadenza for Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto.

Levitski was a son of Jewish parents from Ukraine, born of naturalised American parents on a return trip to Ukraine. He was playing the violin at the age of three, but soon developed an interest in the piano, which he studied in Warsaw with Aleksander Michalowski before making his debut in Antwerp in 1906.

In New York, his father brought him to the attention of Walter Damrosch, who obtained a scholarship for him at the Institute of Musical Art as a pupil of Zygmunt Stojowski, with whom he studied in 1907-1911. In 1913 Levitzki entered the Berlin Hochschule für Musik, where he became the youngest student of Ernő Dohnányi and was awarded the Mendelssohn Prize in 1915. He made his American debut on 17 October 1916 at Aeolian Hall, New York.

Mischa Levitski also recorded extensively for the AMPICO Reproducing Piano Roll Company. Many of his rolls were very popular then and are still popular amongst the AMPICO collectors of today. Here is one of his most familiar and beautiful compositions, "The Enchanted Nymph". This is a late AMPICO B piano roll played by Mr.Levitski, reproduced and recorded in 2008 on a rebuilt early 1920's Mason & Hamlin 7ft Ampico Grand Piano. http://www.box.net/shared/m0e0lb0o4c

He toured in the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Asia, making a reputaion with his performances of the Romantic repertory. His recordings, made 1927-1933. He died suddenly of a heart attack aged 42, in 1941. Levitski's papers are conserved at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. [ [http://www.nypl.org/research/manuscripts/music/muslevit.xml NYPL: Mischa Levitski papers] , the source for this article.]

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