Ida Levin’s Legacy

For all knowledge and wonder…is an impression of pleasure in itself.

Francis Bacon: The Advancement of Learning, 1605

For those of us who were fortunate to hear, see, know, work with, and learn from Ida Levin (1963-2016), there is an indelible impression of the delight she took in drawing upon and sharing the depths of her experiences in life, reading, and in exquisite music-making.

Boston audiences heard her for many seasons as a member of the Mendelssohn String Quartet while in residence at Harvard University; as part of Musicians from Marlboro at the Gardner Museum; as Member Musician of the Boston Chamber Music Society at Jordan Hall, Sanders Theatre, Longy School of Music, First Church Congregational in Cambridge and First Church in Boston; and in the summers at the Marlboro Festival in Vermont and on the BCMS’s Hamel Summer Series.

Ida’s greatest legacy is surely to be found and heard in the countless younger musicians she mentored, nurtured and challenged to be more curious about sources, better prepared yet open to change, more self-assured, and true to one’s beliefs. How else does one approach the supreme artistic and personal integrity she modeled? It is likely that she has had more influence than most in her cohort in shaping the lives and artistry of younger players. In that sense she was very much like one of her most important mentors, Felix Galimir, who was her living link to pre-war Vienna and to the musical traditions she loved best.

For her mentees she became a link in that chain of aural and oral tradition. Her mentees became colleagues, and colleagues friends, deserving of her passionate embrace, commitment, and complete loyalty—her family. Like the true meaning of Felix, she was happy in life, whether scuba diving in San Diego, climbing around the Mount St. Helens Park with her son Judah, eating at the French Laundry, or at a favored restaurant in New Mexico with BCMS colleagues for her fiftieth birthday.

Ida’s last performance at BCMS was as leader of the Françaix Octet, a piece originally written to share the program with Schubert’s Octet for strings and winds, for performance by Willy Boskovsky, the Viennese Waltz King. It contains, among its virtuosity and wit, both a poignant reminiscenza and a fond lullaby, each a fitting musical tribute to a superb master.