Chamber Music

In addition to his solo concerts, Michael Lewin has always been an avid chamber musician. From his teen years at the Juilliard Pre-College through to today, chamber music has been an important part of his musical life.

Mr. Lewin has performed with friends and colleagues at the North American New Music (Buffalo), Flagstaff (Arizona), Spoleto (Charleston SC), Deer Valley (Utah), Mt. Gretna Festival (PA), Castle Hill (Massachusetts) Festivals, Festival La Gesse (France), Mt. Gretna Festival (PA), Ottawa Chamber Music Society (Canada) and in major American, Canadian, European and Asian cities.

From 1990 until 2004, Michael Lewin served as Artistic Director and pianist of the Boston Conservatory Chamber Players. This popular and critically acclaimed group, comprised of 12 elite Boston Conservatory faculty members and often joined by distinguished guest artists, established a dynamic reputation for virtuoso performances and imaginative programming. They performed chamber music of three centuries, and premiered compositions by Daniel Pinkham, Andy Vores, Arthur Levering, Larry Bell, novelist Anthony Burgess, John Adams, Stephen Funk Pearson and Randall Woolf. In addition to their popular subscription series, they performed regularly on WGBH radio and throughout New England. For several years, Mr. Lewin performed with the Lewin-Chang-Diaz Trio (with Lynn Chang, violinist and Andres Diaz, cellist.) This piano trio played in Hong Kong, Hawaii, Buffalo, Canada (Quebec and Ontario) and New England with great success.

Mr. Lewin has performed with members of the Chicago, Lydian, Muir, Borromeo, Charleston, Fry Street, Audobon and Boston Composers String Quartets. He plays duo recitals with his brother, violinist Daniel Lewin. He has ongoing concert relationships with various members of the Boston Symphony, and often performs chamber music with the principal players of some of the orchestras that he solos with.

Since January 2003 Mr. Lewin has been actively performing with violinist Irina Muresanu as the Lewin-Muresanu Duo.

Selected Chamber Music Reviews

With the Boston Conservatory Chamber Players:

"The Amy Beach Piano Quintet provided rich opportunities for a pianist to lean into the thing and breathe fire, which Michael Lewin and his colleagues manifestly did with great conviction and palpable enjoyment. Received with thanks"

- The Boston Globe | Feb. 17, 1998

"The performance (Harbison Piano Quintet) by pianist Michael Lewin and colleagues was poised, sonorous, direct, and satisfying."

- The Boston Globe | Feb. 10, 1997

"Before intermission, pianist Michael Lewin, violinist Joseph Genualdi, violist Amadi Hummings and cellist Peter Rejto performed Faure's First Piano Quartet. The performance was splendid in every way, with the ensemble capturing the work's unbridled passions with playing of refined expression and taste. The musicians were also attentive to the playful qualitites of the Scherzo, and they summoned a hauntingly beautiful lyricism in the Adagio."

- from ArtsIgnite! Festival, Winston-Salem Journal | 2002

With violinist Victor Romanul:

Headline: Romanul-Lewin collaboration a hit of Berkshire summer scene
"From the very first [Brahms D minor Sonata] Romanul and Lewin demonstrated their mastery of technique, nuance, color and ability to communicate both with each other and with their audience. Romanul easily coaxed the sweetest of sounds in the work's tenderest moments and was always answered in kind by the sensitive Lewin. Both pulled out all the stops in the last movement; emotion and conflict rose to a climax of magnificent sound...Concluding the program was the Grieg C minor Sonata. The drama and excitement of the first movement were met with the range of emotions called for. The beauty of the "Romanza" movement is that the piano is given the opportunity to present the simple, lyrical theme alone. Lewin's clarity and gentleness here were accomplished on a piano not worthy of this talent. In the concluding Allegro animato they were once again called upon to give their all. The piano has an enormous role here, and Lewin certainly met the challenge. After all the demands made of him in this ambitious recital, Romanul still had the stamina in the rousing finale to dazzle the audience with his big sound and astonishing technique....a well-conceived, perfectly-rendered recital."

- The Hellenic Chronicle | Aug. 27, 1997

With violinist Daniel Lewin:

"The finesse of the duo was evident in thousands of details: precisely gauged crescendos and decrescendos, perfectly coordinated pauses, the matching of piano staccato to violin spiccato, flexible tempi and clearly articulated rhythms. I marveled at the balance between lightness and propulsion in the scherzo of Beethoven's seventh sonata, the ethereal harmonics and stratospheric violin extension in the Debussy, the passionate conviction in the Grieg, the seamless legato and floating cantabile in the Rachmaninov.
It is easy to lose control in Romantic music- to let go, pour it on and neglect details. The Lewins had the special merit of capturing a world of refinement in a torrent of impassioned sound, and were as convincing in the subtle delicacy of Debussy as in the lyricism of Grieg and the grandeur of Beethoven."

- Las Vegas Review-Journal | Feb. 26, 1991

Misc. Chamber Reviews

"Pianist Lewin's piano work [Schubert Trout Quintet] was a model of clarity. His every note was clear, yet he blended into the whole with unusual sensitivity."

- The News & Courier, Charleston, SC

"Much of the excellence in this performance [Mozart G Minor Piano Quartet] came from Michael Lewin at the piano, whose sense of Mozartian rhythm and willingness to play amongst the strings rather than apart from them gave this version a good deal of its appeal. His clear enthusiasms and musical conceptions were stylistically apt and propelled the quartet through a solidly integrated performance."

- The Evening Post, Charleston, SC

"This [Shostakovich Piano Trio] was a stunning performance by pianist Michael Lewin, violinist Debra Fong and cellist Christoper Costanza, capturing the eerie wistfulness and subsequent grotesqueries of the opening, the driving sardonic spikes of the scherzo with its gleefully sarcastic trio and the poignant tread of the pasacaglia, said to be a death march tribute to slaughtered victims of the war. Finally, there was the macabre dance of the finale, chilling in its skeletal smile, dissolving to arpeggiated ether, a recall of the death march and a little major-key coda of hope."

- The Buffalo News | April 20, 1996

"The great Mendelssohn D Minor Trio was played with appropriate passion, sensitivity and fire. Chang played with sweetness, Lewin spun out the piano lines with a compelling level of warmth and strong character, and Diaz's cello was sometimes reflective, sometimes almost searing in expressiveness. The players leapt into the Finale with headlong intensity and a breathtaking speed that brought the audience to its feet at the conclusion."

- The Patriot-Ledger | June 15, 1993

Post-concert in San Juan, Puerto Rico, December 2005- Violinist Henry Hutchinson, Conductor Guillermo Figueroa, Artist Jan D'Esopo, and Michael Lewin.