NEPTA Speaker Series: Victor Rosenbaum

As members of NEPTA, as musicians, as so-called “piano teachers”, what is really our mission and our goal? How do we think of the work we do? And can we redefine our work and our mission in ways that prevent burnout, promote vitality, inspire our students, and advance the art of music? It’s a lot to ask, but it might just be the only question that really matters.

Internationally known pianist and teacher, Victor Rosenbaum, has received critical acclaim since his first Boston debut recital after joining the New England Conservatory faculty in 1967 when the Boston Globe wrote: Rosenbaum “makes up for all the drudgery the habitual concert-goer has to endure in the hope of finding the occasional real, right thing”. His critical praise continues to this day. Describing his 2020 CD, “Brahms: The Last Piano Pieces” (Bridge), Glyn Pursglove of MusicWeb International said: “Rosenbaum’s account of of these pieces seems to me impeccable. The whole disc is magisterial; a mature pianist bringing deep thought and empathy to a series of mature pieces which stand revealed, as clearly as I have heard, as masterpieces. This will be the disc I turn to when I next want to hear any of these remarkable pieces”. Since leaving New England Conservatory in 2020 after 53 years of consecutive teaching, Rosenbaum has had guest teaching and performing residencies in Puerto Rico, Israel, Japan, Korea, Austria, Bulgaria, and Taiwan, where he was recently appointed Visiting Professor of Piano and Chamber Music at National Taiwan Normal University. He is also an Affiliated Artist on the faculty of MIT.

Over more than five decades, Rosenbaum has concertized widely as soloist and chamber musician in the United States, Europe, Israel, Brazil, Russia, Japan, China and Taiwan, appearing in such prestigious halls as Tully Hall in New York and the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia. An active chamber music performer, he has collaborated with major artists of the 20th and 21st centuries, such as Leonard Rose, Paul Katz, Laurence Lesser, Arnold Steinhardt, Robert Mann, Joseph Silverstein, James Buswell, Malcolm Lowe, Walter Trampler, Leslie Parnas, Kim Kashkashian and the Brentano, Borromeo, and Cleveland String Quartets, and was a member of two trios: The Wheaton Trio and The Figaro Trio. Rosenbaum has played and/or taught at many summer festivals, among them Tanglewood, the Rockport Chamber Music Festival, Kfar Blum and Tel Hai (in Israel), Yellow Barn, Kneisel Hall (Blue Hill), Musicorda, Masters de Pontlevoy (France), the Heifetz Institute, the International Keyboard Institute and Festival in New York, the International Music Seminar in Vienna, the Bowdoin International Music Festival, the Festival at Walnut Hill School, the Puerto Rico International Piano Festival,The Art of the Piano Festival in Cincinnati, the Atlantic Music Festival, Piano Texas, the Adamant Music School, the Lancaster International Piano Festival, and the Eastern Music Festival, where he headed the piano department for five years.

Recital appearances have brought him to Chicago, Minneapolis, Tokyo, Taipei, Vienna, Beijing, St. Petersburg (Russia), Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and New York, among others. In addition to his absorption in the music of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (in particular Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, and Brahms), Rosenbaum has performed and given premieres of works by many 20th and 21st Century composers, including John Harbison, John Heiss, Peter Westergaard, Norman Dinerstein, Arlene Zallman, Donald Harris, Daniel Pinkham, Miriam Gideon, Stephen Albert, and many others. A musician of diverse talents, Rosenbaum is also a composer and has frequently conducted in the Boston area and beyond.

Rosenbaum, who studied with Elizabeth Brock and Martin Marks while growing up in Indianapolis, and went on to study with Rosina Lhevinne at the Aspen Festival and Leonard Shure in New York (while earning degrees at Brandeis University and Princeton), has become a renowned teacher himself. Rosenbaum’s students have established teaching and performing careers in the US and abroad, and have won top competition prizes including, most recently, Aristo Sham’s Gold Medal in the 2025 Van Cliburn Competition, and in such competitions as the Young Concerts Artists, Charles Wadsworth International Competition, New Orleans International Competition, Casagrande International Piano Competition, Gina Bachauer Competition, and the New York International Competition, among others. During his long tenure on the faculty of New England Conservatory, he chaired its piano department for more than a decade, and was also Chair of Chamber Music. On the faculty of Mannes School of Music in New York from 2003-2017, he has also been Visiting Professor of Piano at the Eastman School of Music, a guest teacher at Juilliard, and presents lectures, workshops, and master classes for teachers’ groups and schools both in the U. S. and abroad, including at London’s Royal Academy of Music, Royal College of Music, and Guildhall School, the conservatories of St. Petersburg and Moscow, Beijing Central Conservatory, Shanghai Conservatory, the Toho School in Tokyo, Tokyo Ondai, Seoul National University, most major schools in Taiwan, and other institutions such as the Menuhin School near London, and the Jerusalem Music Center. Rosenbaum’s sixteen years as Director and President of the Longy School of Music (1985-2001) transformed the school into a full-fledged degree granting conservatory as well as a thriving community music school.

In addition to his Brahms disc, Rosenbaum’s recordings on the Bridge and Fleur de Son labels include a Mozart CD, three Schubert discs, one of which was described as “a poignant record of human experience”, and two recordings of Beethoven which the American Record Guide named as among the top classical recordings of 2020.

The New York Times put it succinctly after his performance at Tully Hall: Rosenbaum “could not have been better”. And a headline in the Boston Globe summed up the appeal of Rosenbaum’s playing: “Fervor and Gentleness Combined”.

This first Speaker Series Event for New England Piano Teachers' Association is free for non-NEPTA members. Please register to attend in person or to receive a livestream link.

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