Violinist Walter Levin, founder of the LaSalle Quartet has died last Friday in Chicago. He was 92.
Walter Levin was born in Berlin, where he started his musical studies. In 1938 his family emigrated from Germany and settled in Palestine. After the war, Levin applied to the Juilliard School of Music in New York, where he founded a student quartet which subsequently became known as the LaSalle Quartet. The quartet became famous for its championing of contemporary composers, for its DG recordings of the Second Viennese School (Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, and Anton Webern), as well as for its interpretations of the classical and romantic quartet repertory.
Levin was also an important pedagogue, having taught many of the world’s leading string quartets, among them the Alban Berg Quartet and the Arditti Quartet; other prominent students include the conductor James Levine, the violinist Christian Tetzlaff and the pianist Stefan Litwin.
