Senior Completes Mozart for Thesis

Two unfinished works of Mozart, which a Harvard senior has completed for performance, will be played for the first time this Saturday night in Sanders Theatre.

Robert D. Levin '68, pianist and musicologist, has completed a double concerto movement for piano, violin and orchestra in D Major and the first movement of a quintet for clarinet and strings in B Flat. Both pieces were extant only as incomplete manuscripts before Levin's work.

Levin explained yesterday that only about one third of the completed works consist of the original Mozart texts, but that Levin developed about three quarters of the work from themes Mozart presented in the introductions but never himself developed.

17-month Thesis

Mozart left about 50 incomplete works, and Levin spent about 17 months completing two of these for his senior thesis. He went to Paris last summer to study the original manuscript.

In the concert Saturday at 8:30 p.m., Levin and violinist Mary Harbison will perform the double concerto, and clarinetist Sherman Friedland will take part in the quintet. The program will include other works by Mozart as well.

Levin is something of a Mozart fiend. He claims he owns recordings of 591 of Mozart's 626 works, including many which he recorded himself because there was no recording to purchase. Levin says he has friends in several countries watching for the remaining works, but he believes they have not been recorded.

Beginning in New York at the age of five, Levin has studied theory, composition, piano, and conducting with several well-known teachers. He plays the harpsichord and organ in addition to the piano.