Joseph Levine Collection

Joseph Levine, an American pianist and conductor (not to be confused with the Russian-born Josef Lhevinne--see below), studied at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, PA., where he was a student of Josef Hofmann. At Curtis, he also studied conducting with Fritz Reiner and Arthur Rodzinski.

Besides playing numerous concerts and making recordings with violinist Joseph Szigeti, Levine spent many years as music director of New York's American Ballet Theatre. He recorded several significant ballet scores with the ABT Orchestra for Capitol Records. Later, he became music director of the Omaha Symphony and Omaha Opera, as well as the Bremerton (Washington) Symphony. He was appointed Associate Conductor of the Seattle Symphony, the Honolulu Symphony and the Hawaii Opera Theatre. In 1976, he joined the musical faculty of Cornish Institute of Allied Arts in Seattle. Levine also contributed many articles to music magazines describing various facets of his professional activity.

Levine's formative years coincided with the the preeminence of such "golden age" pianists as Hofmann, Rachmaninoff, Paderewski and Rosenthal. It was thus inevitable that the music-loving public occasionally mistook him for his near-namesake, the Russian-born virtuoso Josef Lhevinne. After several performances on the Curtis Institute's radio broadcasts, Levine heard from Hofmann in a letter -- now part of the IPAM collection -- applauding Levine's temporary decision to add the middle initial "S" to his name: "This will greatly please the other Josef Lhevinne because, as his wife (Rosina) told me, very often when you have played during our broadcasts, he has received letters of congratulations which, of course, greatly annoyed him. For the sake of identity, it is better for you, as well as for him, that you decided to alter your name slightly."