LAZARE LEVY (1882-1964)
French pianist

Lazare Levy was a noted pianist, organist, composer and teacher.  He studied with Louis Diémer who supervised his studies at the Paris Conservatoire, where Levy received a Premier Prix in 1898.  He studied harmony with Lavignac and counterpoint with André Gedalge, whose well known Treatise on the Fugue tormented me as a student. Among his circle were to be found Alfredo Casella, Alfred Cortot, George Enescu, Pierre Monteux, Maurice Ravel, and Jacques Thibaud.

At age twenty, Lazare Levy gave his début at the Concerts Colonne playing the Schumann A minor Piano Concerto under the baton of the great Colonne himself.  He premiered works by important French composers of his time, including Paul Dukas and Darius Milhaud. And he was an early champion of the piano music of Isaac Albéniz, whose "Iberia" (Book I) he performed in 1911.  The great French composer and pianist, Camille Saint-Saëns, was often to be found in the front row of Lévy's early recitals and considered him to possess "that rare union of technical perfection and musicality."

Lazare Levy, at the age of 25, had co-authored a Méthode Supérieure for piano. He later advocated an innovative piano technique which involved greater emphasis on hand and arm technique than pure finger technique, anticipating, perhaps, the teachings of Dorothy Taubman, undoubtedly saving his students from many of the still all too common injuries suffered by pianists, and offering them a vastly enriched pallet of tone color and articulation.  He succeeded Cortot at the Paris Conservatoire in 1923 where where his students numbered, among countless others, Marcel Dupré, Clara Haskil, Monique Haas, Lukas Foss, John Cage, and the wonderful Solomon.

He can be heard playing one of his own compositions at the bottom of this page.

Couperin  Les lis naissans and Les Rozeaux

recorded in 1950