Theodore Lettvin

Theodore Lettvin was an American pianist. He was born on October 29, 1926, in Chicago, Illinois. He was the son of Solomon Lettvin and Fanny Naktin, Jewish emigrants from Ukraine.

Lettvin began performing at the age of five. In 1937 he made his debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, performing a concerto by Felix Mendelssohn. He studied at the Curtis Institute with Rudolf Serkin and Mieczyslaw Horszowski.

After two years of service in the navy during the Second World War, he returned to his musical career. In 1948 he won the Naumburg Young Performers Competition, and in 1952 he received seventh prize at the Queen Elisabeth International Competition.

In 1951 and 1952 he toured France with the violinist Sidney Harth. He continued to give concerts in the United States and Europe until the end of the 1990s. He gave the first performance in the United States of Bela Bartok's Scherzo for Piano and Orchestra, and he was especially successful in performances of the piano concertos of Brahms and Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.

Lettvin also taught at the New England Conservatory from 1968 to 1977, at the University of Michigan from 1977 to 1987, and at Rutgers University from 1987 to 1998. He died on August 24, 2003, in Bradford, New Hampshire.

Connections

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