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The American pianist, Jerome Lowenthal, studied with Olga Samaroff-Stokowski in his native Philadelphia, William Kapell and Eduard Steuermann at the Juilliard School in New York, and Alfred Cortot at the École Normale de Musique de Paris in Paris, France. Mmeanwhile he travelled annually to Los Angeles for coachings with Artur Rubinstein. After winning prizes in three international competitions (Ferruccio Busoni International Piano Competition in Bolzano, Italy in 1957; Queen Elisabeth Music Competition in Brussels in 1960; and Darmstadt International Chopin Piano Competition), he moved to Jerusalem where, for three years, he played, taught and lectured.
Jerome Lowenthal made his debut at 13 with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Returning to the USA from Jerusalem in 1963, he made his debut with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, playing Béla Bartók's Piano Concerto No. 2. Since then, he has performed more-or-less everywhere, from the Aleutians to Zagreb. Conductors with whom he has appeared as soloist include Daniel Barenboim, Seiji Ozawa, Michael Tilson Thomas, Yuri Temirkanov, and Leonard Slatkin, as well as such giants of the past as Leonard Bernstein, Eugene Ormandy, Pierre Monteux and Leopold Stokowski. He has performed in a large number of chamber music festivals and collaborated in concerts with violinist Itzhak Perlman (playing sonatas), cellist Nathaniel Rosen, and pianists Ronit Amir (his late wife), Ursula Oppens, and Carmel Lowenthal (his daughter), as well as quintets with the Lark Quartet, Avalon Quartet, and Shanghai Quartet.
Jerome Lowenthal is recognized as a specialist of Franz Liszt, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Béla Bartók, and more generally of virtuoso and late romantic music. His recordings include piano concertos by F. Liszt with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and the complete Tchaikovsky concerto cycle with the London Symphony Orchestra. He has an extensive repertoire, including 63 performed piano concerti, and is the dedicatee of many new works and has unearthed some rare romantic piano works, such as the F. Liszt’s Third Piano Concerto edited by his former student Jay Rosenblatt. He continues to fascinate audiences, who find in his playing a youthful intensity and an eloquence born of life-experience. He is a virtuoso of the fingers and the emotions.
Jerome Lowenthal has recorded for numerous record labels, including RCA, Columbia, and Arabesque, and is in the process of recording the complete Années de Pèlerinage of F. Liszt for Bridge Records. He has recently recorded the L.v. Beethoven's Fourth Concerto with cadenzas by eleven different composers. His other recordings include concerti by Tschaikovsky and F. Liszt, solo works by Sinding and B. Bartók, and chamber-music by Arensky and Taneyev.
Jerome Lowenthal is a professor of piano at the Juilliard School in New York since 1991, where he was also chair of the piano department. Additionally, Lowenthal is on the faculty at Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, California since 1970. He has worked with an extraordinary number of gifted pianists, whom he encourages to understand the music they play in a wide aesthetic and cultural perspective and to project it with the freedom which that perspective allows. Beside, he gives master-classes in North America, Europe, and Asia, He is a frequent judge in international piano competitions, such as the Cliburn, Tschaikowsky, Rubinstein, Horowitz, and Bachauer piano competitions, to name a few.. Lowenthal recently received an honorary doctorate from the Cleveland Institute of Music. |
