Kim Kashkashian / Robert Levin ASTURIANA Songs from Spain and Argentina

Kim Kashkashian and Robert Levin have been playing together since the mid 1970s. Their debut ECM release was “Elegies” recorded in 1984, with music of Britten, Vaughan Williams, Carter, Glasunow, Liszt, Kodály and Vieuxtemps. This was soon followed by the Sonatas for Viola/Piano - and for Solo Viola - of Hindemith. In 1990 they recorded Shostakovich’s Sonata for Viola and Piano op 147 for the New Series, in 1996 the Brahms viola sonatas in a recording that won the Edison Award.

Kim Kashkashian’s international career was given impetus by her early success at the Munich ARD competition. From the outset she was much in demand as a chamber musician and as a guest at festivals including Marlboro, Spoleto, Mostly Mozart, Lockenhaus und Salzburg. Previously a music professor in Freiburg and at the Hanns Eisler Academy in Berlin, she teaches today at the New England Conservatory in Boston.

Robert Levin is renowned for his restoration of the classical period practise of improvised embellishments and cadenzas, and his many recordings include Mozart piano concertos with Christopher Hogwood and the Academy of Ancient Music, and Beethoven concertos with John Eliot Gardiner und the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique. Alongside his concert activities Levin is also a noted theorist and Mozart scholar. His completion of the Mozart Mass in C Minor was premiered in Carnegie Hall in January 2005. Robert Levin is a professor of humanities at Harvard University, and was recently appointed artistic director of the Sarasota Music Festival.