Product Code Database
Ray Lev (May 8, 1912 – May 20, 1968) was an American classical pianist. One year after her birth in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, her father, a synagogue Hazzan, and mother, a concert singer, brought her to the United States. Biographical sketch on Bach Cantatas Website, accessed August 11, 2008
Lev gave two command performances in London, England, performed for US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and earned seven citations for patriotic service by extensively performing for US and allied armed forces during World War II. In 1948, however, she took a step that would negate the benefits of these public-spirited activities and that effectively would put an end to the progress of her career: she joined 31 other American musicians, artists, and writers in signing an open letter of solidarity with twelve Russian writers who had called for fellow Communists to declare themselves publicly. "We Grip Your Hand," Time, May 10, 1948 As a result, in 1950 she had the dubious distinction of being the sole classical pianist named in the Red Channels list of alleged communist sympathizers during the American Red Scare. (In between, in 1949, she had formed part of the Paul Robeson concert that ended in the Peekskill Riots.Cohen, Ronald D. Rainbow Quest: The Folk Music Revival and American Society, 1940–1970, p. 63. University of Massachusetts Press (Boston), 2002.) Little information about her appears thereafter, and her name is largely forgotten today, although one reference suggests that she continued playing throughout her remaining life, including nearly annual Carnegie Hall recitals, and performed the Schumann Piano Concerto in April 1968, a month before her death. Some support for the former claim can be found in the Fall 1958 Juilliard Review, which indicates that on April 8 of that year she performed the premiere of Toccata for Piano by Juilliard alumnus Wallingford Riegger at Carnegie Hall. Juilliard Review, Fall 1958 Alumni News, accessed May 18, 2009 After the Khruschev revelations about Stalin in 1956 she suffered a nervous breakdown and bitterly regretted her political engagements - and refused to sign a petition against the Vietnam War in 1967. In 1964 she took up a teaching post at the Tokyo University of Fine Arts after spending a few years in England with her friends the Huxleys near London.She returned to New York and gave 2 recitals in 1967 and 1968, the latter with music only by Schumann. The fliers for her concerts were produced by Abrams Books, whose wife Nina was a first cousin of Ray Lev.Presumably, however, she became primarily a teacher; her students include Anne Gamble,Anne Gamble Kennedy Aki Takahashi, Biographical sketch from Baker's Student Encyclopedia of Music appearing on enotes web site, accessed May 18, 2009 Sophia Rosoff, composer Bob Telson, and the currently active American pianists Joel SachsNY Times January 18, 2015 "Heralding New Music and Nuturing It" and Miriam Brickman. and Michael Steinberg.
Lev died by suicide in May 1968, a month after a Carnegie Hall performance of Schumann's Concerto. The Broadcast 41: Women and the Anti-Communist Blacklist, accessed August 3, 2020
Album notes to Johannes Brahms, Sonata No. 1 in C Major; Two Choral Preludes -- Ray Lev, Pianist, Concert Hall Society Release A7 (78 RPM, ca. 1946).
Carnegie Hall
Ray Lev appeared in recital at Carnegie Hall nine times between 1941 and 1967, and gave many more performances as a featured soloist in both orchestral and benefit concerts. Flyers for Lev's recitals are housed in the Carnegie Hall Archives, and feature both a promo photo taken by Eliascheff and a reproduction of a 1950 painting by Raphael Soyer.
Recordings
In a 78 RPM set released by Musicraft Records in early 1939, Lev and clarinettist David Weber collaborated in the first recording of the Brahms Sonata in F minor, op. 120 no. 1, in its original instrumentation for clarinet and piano. "February Records," Time, February 6, 1939 After World War II, Lev began making phonograph records for the Concert Hall Society label, issued first on 78 RPM disks and then on LP album. She set down some adventurous literature for the day, including Franz Schubert Piano Sonata in C Major, D. 840 ( Reliquie) with the completion by Ernst Krenek,Album notes to Franz Schubert, Piano Sonata No. 15 in C Major (Unfinished); Allegretto in C Minor — Ray Lev, Pianist, Concert Hall Society Release B3 (78 RPM, 1947) probably otherwise represented on records in this form only by the slightly later performance of Friedrich Wührer on Vox Records. Her recording has not appeared on compact disc, although Wührer's has received a private CD release copied from LP. Lev’s records that have achieved CD reissue include her 1946 account of Bach’s Concerto No. 5 in D minor after Antonio Vivaldi op. 3, no. 11, BWV 596, in her own transcription, and a waltz by Sergei Prokofiev, no. 2 from his Music for Children, op. 65.
Categories: 1912 Births, American Women Classical Pianists, Pupils Of Tobias Matthay, 20th-century Russian Jews, 20th-century American Classical Pianists, 20th-century American Women Pianists, 1968 Suicides, 1968 Deaths, Emigrants From The Russian Empire To The United States, American Labor Party Politicians, Suicides In The United States
|
|
