Steven Lubin
Steven Lubin is an American pianist and musical scholar. He is best known for his performances on the fortepiano, the early version of the piano.
Studies
Lubin was born in Brooklyn, New York City. He studied piano with Lisa Grad, Nadia Reisenberg, Seymour Lipkin, Rosina Lhévinne and Beveridge Webster, and viola with Florence Nicolaides. He attended New York's High School of Music & Art; graduated from Harvard College, majoring in philosophy; he earned a master's degree in piano at the Juilliard School; and he completed his Ph.D. in musicology at New York University, where he wrote a dissertation entitled Techniques for the Analysis of Development in Middle-Period Beethoven.Period performance
A subspecialty of Lubin's is his approach to performing the keyboard works of the Viennese Classical composers on replicas of the historic instruments actually used by the composers. Such instruments are often generically called fortepianos. In the 1960s, Lubin frequented the New Hampshire workshop of Philip Belt, a pioneering American builder of fortepiano replicas, and became curious how Mozart's piano concertos would have sounded on these instruments in their original performances. In the mid 1970s, he built a fortepiano replica of his own, with the help of a piano technician friend, Lee Morton, who had served as Belt's apprentice. At his debut recital at Carnegie Recital Hall in 1977, Lubin performed Mozart works on his fortepiano, along with a large-scale Chopin work on the modern grand.Subsequently, he organized a period-instrument Mozart orchestra, The Mozartean Players, and presented, throughout the 1980s, a series of period performances of Mozart piano concertos in major New York halls. At these performances Lubin conducted and played the solo parts. Arabesque Records recorded a series these works, and a new release from among the performances of this era has appeared in 2006 on the Classical Soundings label.
Lubin has made concert tours in North America, Europe and Australia.
Recordings
As a recording artist Lubin has made 20 CDs for Decca, Harmonia Mundi USA, Arabesque and Classical Soundings.In 1987, Decca Records in London engaged Lubin to record and perform the cycle of Beethoven piano concertos on period instruments, in collaboration with the Academy of Ancient Music directed by Christopher Hogwood. These recordings have been reissued by Decca in 2006. In addition to other recordings for Decca, Lubin has made CDs for Harmonia Mundi USA of the complete trios and piano quartets of Mozart, and of Schubert's trios. These recordings were issued by The Mozartean Players in trio format, where Lubin was joined by Stanley Ritchie, violin, and Myron Lutzke, cello. Anca Nicolau is currently the violinist of the trio.
On the modern piano in recent years Lubin has appeared both as a solo recitalist and concerto soloist.