Robert Taub

Director of Music, The Arts Institute, University of Plymouth
As Music Director for the Arts Institute at University of Plymouth, Dr Robert Taub is excited about building and leading Musica Viva - a collaborative programme featuring fellow leading musicians as well as colleagues within the University that brings top tier concert performances and broad-based music educational events to communities of all ages in Devon and the South West.

From New York’s Carnegie Hall to Hong Kong’s Cultural Centre, Robert is acclaimed internationally as a concert pianist and recording artist. He has performed as guest soloist with the world’s leading orchestras and conductors, including the MET Orchestra in Carnegie Hall, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic, The Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, and many others.

He has also performed solo concerts on the Great Performers Series at New York’s Lincoln Center and other major series worldwide, and has been featured in international festivals, including the Saratoga Festival, the Lichfield Festival in England, San Francisco’s Midsummer Mozart Festival, Aspen Music Festival, and the Geneva International Summer Festival, among others. He has also initiated and led several concert series and festivals, including a highly touted series at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, where is only predecessor as Artist-in-Residence was TS Eliot.

Following the conclusion of his highly celebrated New York series of Beethoven Piano Sonatas, Taub completed a sold-out Beethoven cycle in London at Hampton Court Palace. His recordings of the complete Beethoven Piano Sonatas have been praised worldwide for their insight, freshness, and emotional involvement. In addition to performing, Robert Taub is an eloquent spokesman for music, giving frequent engaging and informal lectures and pre-concert talks. His book Playing the Beethoven Piano Sonatas (Amadeus Press) is a standard for the Beethoven Sonata literature.

In addition, Taub prepared a new edition of the Beethoven Piano Sonatas for Schirmers Performance Editions, published by Hal Leonard Corporation. He has also performed several “historic pianoforte” concerts in the London area of Beethoven Sonatas, playing pianofortes – 1795 Longman and Broderip, 1816 Broadwood, and 1823 Streicher – specifically associated with Beethoven during his years of composition of particular Sonatas.
He has recorded the complete piano sonatas of Beethoven and Scriabin, as well as works of Babbitt, Schumann, and Liszt, several of which have been selected as “critic’s favourites” by Gramophone, Newsweek, The New York Times, and The Washington Post.

Taub has been in the vanguard of new music, having premiered piano concertos by Milton Babbitt (MET Orchestra) and Mel Powell (Los Angeles Philharmonic), and making the first recordings of the Persichetti Piano Concerto (Philadelphia Orchestra) and Sessions Piano Concerto. He has also premiered solo piano and chamber music works commissioned for him by Milton Babbitt, Jonathan Dawe, Jane O'Leary and other major composers.

During his first term at the Institute for Advanced Study, he initiated a concert series dedicated to the complete Beethoven Piano Sonatas. So popular were these concerts that he played each programme three times to sold-out houses; the series was featured in the US national press. In addition, Taub started a lunchtime series of informal discussions about music. In his subsequent two terms, he included chamber music in the concert series, bringing in world-renowned colleagues, with at least one work from every concert broadcast on NPR’s “Performance Today.” He also expanded the popular informal talks to include interviews with important young composers.

Robert Taub is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Princeton where he was a University Scholar. As a Danforth Fellow he completed his doctoral degree at The Juilliard School where he received the highest award in piano. Taub has served as Artist-in-Residence at Harvard University and at UC Davis prior to his time at the Institute for Advanced Study. He is currently Director of Music, The Arts Institute, University of Plymouth, where he initiated and directs the Musica Viva Concert Series.