Anatoly Levin is a Soviet and Russian conductor and music educator, born in Moscow on December 1, 1947. He began studying music as a child, first playing the cello. At age ten, he joined a music-school orchestra led by Vladimir Yesipov.
Levin graduated from the Sergei Prokofiev Music School No. 1 in 1963 and studied viola at the Academic Music College attached to the Moscow Conservatory, graduating with honors in 1967. He continued his viola studies at the conservatory and also studied opera and symphonic conducting with Leo Ginzburg. He graduated in viola in 1972 and in opera and symphonic conducting in 1973.
In January 1973, Boris Pokrovsky invited Levin to join the newly established Moscow Chamber Musical Theater. Levin worked there until 2007, taking part in productions including Shostakovich’s The Nose, The Gamblers, Rayok: Anti-Formalist, and The Age of DSCH; Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress, The Fable, The Wedding, and The Soldier’s Tale; Mozart’s The Impresario; and Schnittke’s Life with an Idiot. He toured with the theater and conducted in concert halls and opera houses in Europe, South America, and Japan.
Since 1991, Levin has led the Symphony Orchestra of the Academic Music College attached to the Moscow Conservatory. He directed the Moscow Conservatory’s orchestra of junior students from 2002 to 2008 and has led its student symphony orchestra since 2008. He has also been artistic director and chief conductor of the Volga Youth Symphony Orchestra since 2002, and in 2007 took charge of the Moscow Conservatory Concert Symphony Orchestra. He is a professor of opera and symphonic conducting at the Moscow Conservatory.
Levin has conducted recordings of works by Bortniansky, Mozart, Kholminov, Takhtakishvili, and other composers. His 1997 recording of Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress received positive reviews in Japan. A 1995 recording of Shostakovich works for bass and chamber orchestra, made with singer Alexei Mochalov and the Chamber Youth Orchestra, received the Diapason d’Or in December 1997 and the highest rating from the magazine Le Monde de la musique. In 1997, Levin was named Honored Artist of the Russian Federation. In 2022, he and the Moscow Conservatory Concert Symphony Orchestra won the accompaniment category of the first 440 Hertz Grand Orchestra Award.