Lazare Lévy

Lazare Lévy (January 18, 1882 – September 20, 1964) was a French pianist, composer and teacher who toured throughout Europe, in North Africa, Israel, USSR and Japan.

A composer, influential pedagogue, organist and piano virtuoso, Lévy, remembered as Lazare-Lévy, was born in Brussels of French parents. Noted virtuoso pedagogue Louis Diemer (1843-1919 soon supervised the young boy's studies at the Paris Conservatoire, where Lévy received a Premier Prix in 1898. The pianist also studied harmony with Lavignac and counterpoint with Gedalge. Among his comrades and early music partners were Alfredo Casella, Alfred Cortot, George Enesco, Pierre Monteux, Maurice Ravel, and Jacques Thibaud. At age twenty, Lévy made his début récital at the Concerts Colonne, under Colonne's baton, in Schumann's A-minor piano concerto. Lazare Lévy premiered works by French composers of his time, including Dukas and Milhaud. He was also an early champion of Albéniz, whose Iberia (Book I) he played in 1911.

In the front row of Lévy's earliest recitals was Saint-Saëns, who considered him to possess "that rare union of technical perfection and musicality."

In his twenty-fifth year, Lévy co-authored a "Méthode Supérieure 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.

Lévy was a distinguished professor of piano at the Paris Conservatoire, first as a temporary teacher (1914-16 and 1921-3) and then as Cortot's successor (1923-41; 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'd held was nevertheless given to Marcel Ciampi and Lévy never recovered it. His youngest son, Phillip, 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 Clara Haskil, Solomon Cutner, Monique Haas, Lukas Foss, John Cage, Oskar Morawetz, Kazimierz Serocki, Marcel Dupre, Chieko Hara-Cassado and many other virtuosos mostly known in France nowadays.

Source: Arbiter Records # 150, "Francis Plante and His Peers. Masters of the French Piano Tradition", New York, 2007