Pianist Michael Lewin: “There is no deadline for the first time since I was twelve.” Liz Linder photography
Pianist Michael Lewin is perhaps more well-known abroad, than in his Boston-area home. A globe-trotting career that regularly takes him to Asia, South America and to Europe has been necessarily interrupted, and he is isolated now in his West Roxbury home.
His Boston Conservatory at Berklee piano students, likewise from all over the globe—“I have ten students, nine are international,” he says—were equally disrupted. For all of them, the pandemic shutdown also sent their lives into disarray.
“It was a vivid moment, the last day of school,” he says. “We knew it was the last day. That was shocking to me, in March, sending them back all over the world. Their lives are on hold.”
That was then. This is now, and it still looks a lot like then.
“I realized it was going to be a long-term proposition,” he says. “I’m trying to survive in this emotional cocoon. It’s an extended state of limbo.
“I’ve been doing an astounding amount of online activity,” he says of his recent months. “Lectures. Online festivals. Judging competitions. I’ve been amazed how many people want to interview me online. It keeps me engaged, and I’m glad to be of interest.
“But concerts toppled like dominos,” he says. “Every single 2020 event has been canceled. I had an incredibly active summer planned, in Europe and Asia, all over the States, some really exciting concerts. Just next week I was playing two concerts in Newport.”
Lewin—who won a 2014 Grammy for the crossover recording “Winds of Samsara,” and has a long list of fascinating recordings of Debussy, Chopin, Griffes, Liszt and others—now looks to stay focused, after years of perpetual performances.
“There is no deadline for the first time since I was twelve,” he says. “I was always learning for something—a concert, a recording. Almost nothing I play is not meant to be performed. Now there is this loss of urgency to perfect, to polish pieces.
“I’m lucky, I still have BoCo,” he says of his teaching position. “There was a time that I felt sorry for myself that I had to teach. Thankfully it’s stable and secure.
“But I’ve lost essentially half my income, and my identity is wrapped up as a concert pianist.”
Performing remains impossible, but some version of teaching can be accomplished online. Lewin keeps up with his BoCo students, and was recently named classical music director of Ethos Music in China—a teaching, lecturing and performing position now confined to virtual experiences, but which will eventually include regular trips there.
“In many ways they are productive,” he says of the internet initiatives. “At least you can still teach. But it’s not the same as in-person. It’s detached, disembodied. Being with them physically is psychologically important.
“I get frustrated online,” he says. “The sound nuance. The color. I can’t always see the fingering. But this is huge network available now. Any student in the world can have access from my living room.”
For decades Lewin has also directed the esteemed Piano Masters series at BoCo, a first-Tuesday of the month event cherished by many classical music insiders. Necessarily, those programs have been postponed until next year.
“I’m funded for it,” he says of his long-running concerts, which have included appearances by Lewin’s BoCo faculty colleagues, as well as pianists like Till Fellner, Awadagin Pratt, and Anne-Marie McDermott over the years. “But I’m canceling the first three programs, and I have no idea what’s happening after that.” If it does return, Lewin himself may perform the welcome-back program in February.
“I’ve taken my concert life for granted,” he says. “I feel like a dinosaur. I have a career traveling the world playing classical music. Those careers are harder and harder to achieve, and after this it might be impossible.
“I’m depressed about a diminishment of the performing arts going forward. Concert series, orchestras that won’t survive. Audiences that won’t survive.
“But people are devoted to classical music,” he says, “and they will find different ways. Traveling is going to be difficult. There will be masks, and restrictions. I don’t think it will not exist, but the economics are going to be a big issue.
“I can’t imagine when I go back onstage, in terms of the gratitude I’ll feel for the audience,” he says. “And all of this in the context of the political division, and the social unrest happening now. For people who have been denied that shared experience, it has the potential to be the most profoundly moving thing.”
Keith Powers covers music and the arts for Gannett New England, Opera News and Leonore Overture. Follow @PowersKeith; email to keithmichaelpowers@gmail.com.