Golden Mozart Medal Announces 2024 Winner

Pianist and and Mozart specialist Robert Levin has won the award for his contributions to the knowledge of Mozart’s life and works

Founded in 1914, the Golden Mozart Medal is the highest award of the International Mozarteum Foundation and is given to individuals and institutions that have made significant contributions to understanding the life and works of W.A. Mozart and the work of the Foundation. 

This year’s winner is pianist, teacher, and composer Robert Levin, an emeritus professor at Harvard University and a member and scholar of the Academy for Mozart Research. 

He has appeared solo with major international orchestras and has performed chamber music alongside Kim Kashkashian, Steven Isserlis, and his wife, pianist Ya-Fei Chuang. He was artistic director of the Sarasota Music Festival for many years and has appeared regularly at the Mozart Week Festival since 1984. Notably, his editions of Mozart’s unfinished works are published by every major publishing house, and have been recorded and performed worldwide. 

Levin served as a Junior Professor of Music at Harvard University from 1993 to 2013, and has been a visiting professor at New York’s The Juilliard School. Additionally, he is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2018, he was awarded the Bach Medal of the City of Leipzig. 

In 2022, Levin released his complete recording of Mozart’s keyboard sonatas on the ECM record label. The instrument used on the album was Mozart’s own Walter fortepiano in the possession of the Mozarteum Foundation. 

Past recipients of the Golden Mozart Medal have included Lilli Lehmann, Karl Böhm, Vienna Philharmonic, Sir András Schiff, Alfred Brendel, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, and Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra. 

“Robert Levin has been closely associated with the Mozarteum Foundation for fifty years and we value him as a true friend and benefactor,” said the Foundation’s president, Johannes Honsig-Erlenburg in the press release. “He is also an exceptional artist who is second to none as a living force in the world of Mozart performances and of Mozart research. He also has a gift for communicating the fascination of Mozart in all its facets to audiences all over the globe. We offer him our heartiest congratulations.” 

“Robert Levin has earned our gratitude more especially for completing numerous fragmentary works by Mozart with the aim of allowing us to approach Mozart’s own method of composition in a way that is academically sound and stylistically well informed,” added the Foundation’s honorary member Dr. Christoph Wolff. “As a distinguished performer and teacher he has also contributed substantially to reviving the performance practices of Mozart’s own day by demonstrating the importance of improvisatory elements such as ornaments and freely invented cadenzas.”