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 ROBERT
TAUB
Saturday, November 1st at 7:30 pm
Robert Taub is an
internationally acclaimed leader in the new generation of virtuoso pianists.
Since his debut at Alice Tully Hall in 1981, he has performed several
times on the Great Performers Series at Lincoln Center and appeared throughout
the United States, Europe, the Far East, and Latin America. His appearances
at Carnegie Hall most recently included the world premiere of Milton Babbitt's
Concerto No. 2 with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra under James
Levine.
Taub has performed
with the San Francisco Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic,
Utah Symphony Orchestra, Montreal Symphony, Munich Philharmonic, BBC Philharmonic,
Bonn Philharmonic, Orchestra of St. Luke's, Hong Kong Philharmonic, and
the Singapore Symphony. He has also participated in major festivals such
as the Saratoga Festival, where he collaborated with Charles Dutoit; the
Lichfield Festival in England with Sir Edward Downes; San Francisco's
Midsummer Mozart Festival; and the Geneva International Summer Festival.
In addition, he has given solo recitals in New York, Boston, San Francisco,
Los Angeles, Seattle, London, Amsterdam, Berlin, Hong Kong, Singapore,
Bangkok, and Manila.
Taub was appointed
Artist-in-Residence at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton in
1994, becoming the first musician to be so recognized in the Institute's
sixty-five-year history. (The only other artist who has been in residence
at the Institute was T.S. Eliot, in 1948.) During the first three of this
seven years at the Institute, Taub performed the complete cycle of Beethoven
Sonatas in nine programs. This transversal of the Sonatas was mirrored
by performances on the Music for Galway series in Ireland and more recently
at the Wharton Center for the Performing Arts in East Lansing, Michigan.
An additional series is currently in progress at Merkin Hall in New York
City. Sonatas from each concert were aired on National Public Radio's
syndicated arts program Performance Today, which has continued
to broadcast concerts featuring Robert Taub.
Taub has recorded
the complete Beethoven Piano Sonatas for VOX. He has also recorded the
Sonatas of Scriabin and works of Beethoven, Schumann, Liszt, and Babbitt
for Harmonia Mundi, several of which have been selected as "critic's
favorites" by Newsweek, The New York Times, The Washington Post,
Gramophone, Ovation, and Fanfare.
Taub's repertoire
embraces music from the Baroque era to the present day, and he has been
chosen by a number of prominent contemporary composers to premiere their
music. In January 1990, he gave the premiere of Mel Powell's Two Piano
Concerto with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which won the 1990 Pulitzer
Prize and was released on the Harmonia Mundi label. He gave the premiere
of Emblems, a major solo work by Milton Babbitt at London's Queen
Elizabeth Hall with further performances in New York, Seattle, San Francisco,
and Berlin. Between these two premieres he played the Persichetti Piano
Concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra under Charles Dutoit, recorded
by the New World label. Also for New World, Taub made the first recording
of Roger Sessions' Piano Concerto (1956) with Paul Dunkel and the
Westchester Philharmonic.
His other important
Babbitt premieres included Preludes, Interludes, and Postlude,
in 1992; the Piano Quartet in 1996, commissioned by the Library of Congress
and premiered at the Kennedy Center; and Piano Concerto No. 2 which was
commissioned for Robert Taub and James Levine by the Geraldine R. Dodge
Foundation and premiered in November 1998 with the Metropolitan Opera
Orchestra at Carnegie Hall.
In 1998-99, as featured
soloist in the Asian Piano Festival, Taub performed in Hong Kong, Singapore,
Bangkok, and Malaysia. He also performed solo concerts in Los Angeles,
Cleveland, and with the Utah Symphony. 1999-2000 season highlights included
Beethoven Sonata concerts in Cleveland, San Jose, and at Merkin Hall and
the Wharton Performing Arts Center. Taub also performed a solo recital
at the Library of Congress. In addition, he gave a series of concerts
at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, which included Schubert's
Winterreise and chamber music of Bartok and Brahms. In June 2000,
Taub performed Stravinsky's 1947 version of Petrouschka with James
Levine and the Munich Philharmonic, with three concerts in Munich and
five on tour in Germany and Italy. This resulted in an immediate reengagement
for February 2002, when he performed the Roger Sessions Concerto.
In spring 2001, Taub
gave recitals in Boston and Saratoga in addition to continuing Beethoven
Sonata cycles at the Merkin Concert Hall and Moravian College. Other performances
took him to Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Cleveland, after which he
played concerti of Bach and Stravinsky with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra
in addition to his appearances with the Munich Philharmonic under James
Levine. In October of 2002 he joined Maestro Levine, soprano Dawn Upshaw,
and principals of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra in Schönberg's
Pierrot Lunaire in Carnegie Hall.
Taub was recently
named Visiting Professor at London's Kingston University, a 5-year appointment,
during which he will complete a Beethoven sonata cycle and perform programs
of contemporary music.
Taub is a Phi Beta
Kappa graduate of Princeton where he was a University Scholar. As a Danforth
Fellow he completed his doctoral degree at The Juilliard School where
he also received the highest award in piano. His principal teacher was
Jacob Lateiner. From 1990 to 1992, Taub served as Blodgett Artist-in-Residence
at Harvard University, an appointment that entailed a week of performances
and masterclasses four times during each academic year. In 1993, he led
the chamber music program at Princeton University, and the following year
he was a guest lecturer for the doctoral program at Rutgers. He has led
music forums at Oxford University, Cambridge University, and The Juilliard
School. His book, Playing the Beethoven Piano Sonatas, was issued
worldwide in the spring of 2002 by Amadeus Press.
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