“Taub plays with wholly extraordinary musical virtuosity.” - London, The times
Robert Taub - uncommonly eloquent, unusally powerful performances. - The New York Times
From New York’s Carnegie Hall to Hong Kong’s Cultural Centre, Robert Taub 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, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Montreal Symphony Orchestra, Munich Philharmonic, Hong Kong Philharmonic and many others throughout Europe, North America, Asia and Latin America.
Robert Taub 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 directed several concert series and festivals, including a highly touted series at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, where his only predecessor as Artist-in-Residence was TS Eliot.
Following the conclusion of his highly celebrated New York concert 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 – is published internationally by Amadeus Press and is recognised as a standard for the Beethoven Sonata literature.
In addition to his recordings of the Beethoven Piano Sonatas and his book about them, Taub has 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.
In addition to the complete Beethoven Piano Sonatas, Robert Taub has recorded the complete Sonatas of 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. His most recently released recording is the Sessions Piano Concerto with James Levine and the Munich Philharmonic.
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 premiered six works of Milton Babbitt (solo piano, chamber music, 2nd Piano Concerto). Taub also formed collaborations with several younger composers, including Jonathan Dawe (USA), David Bessell (UK) and Ludger Brümmer (Germany) performing their 21st century works in America and Europe.
During his first term at the Institute for Advanced Study, Robert Taub initiated a concert series dedicated to the complete Beethoven Piano Sonatas. So popular were these concerts that he played each program 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 that became “standing room only.” 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 expanded the popular informal talks to include interviews with important young composers. As part of this series he arranged a special evening with James Levine and Milton Babbitt, discussing Babbitt’s 2nd Piano Concerto prior to his premiere performance of this work in Carnegie Hall (with Levine and the MET Orchestra).
Taub is featured in a PBS television program – Big Ideas – that highlights him playing and discussing Beethoven Piano Sonatas. Filmed during his final year at the Institute for Advanced Study, this program has been broadcast throughout the U.S. on PBS affiliates. He has also been featured artist on terrestrial radio stations worldwide, including BBC, NPR, RTHK, RTE and many others.
Dr. 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 has led master classes and music forums at Oxford and Cambridge Universities and The Juilliard School. Taub has also been Visiting Professor at Princeton University and at Kingston University (U.K.).
Having achieved many goals in the arena of the performing arts, Taub widened his focus and with Yann LeCun, co-founded MuseAmi (May 2007) a software company, with the vision to empower everyone worldwide to more easily facilitate their innate musical creativity – to create, learn, collaborate, and share – and participate as fully as possible with the music they love. MuseAmi attracted a high-powered and closely-knit team of leading machine learning experts, signal processing engineers, and creative developers. Under Bob’s leadership, the company developed significant intellectual property that the company commercialized with several world-leading strategic partners, enabling wholly new levels of interactive participation in music and verbal communication, and personalization of education and entertainment.
In 2016, Robert Taub returned to performing. Most recently, as Music Director of The Arts Institute, University of Plymouth (UK), Robert Taub created and directed the Musica Viva Concert Series, a new programme of concerts and associated workshops involving fellow top-tier performing artists and colleagues.
Throughout his career, Robert Taub has been a staunch advocate of musical education, particularly for young people. From the outset, his Musica Viva Concert Series (UK) included informal pre-concert talks which he led, often involving guest artists as well, discussing musical topics relevant to the evenings’ performances – including matters of musical context, creative evolution of composers’ ideas, and interpretive issues. These talks were so popular that typically more than ninety-five percent of the audience arrived early to attend. For school children he presented many special programmes with specific musical themes through UK’s Children’s University. In addition, Taub frequently gives masterclasses for pianists and chamber musicians at educational institutions.
In June 2021, Theatre Royal Plymouth, in association with The Arts Institute, presented Some Call It Home, a multi-media music drama that Taub created, wrote, produced and directed, with music composed by Jane O’Leary and Jonathan Dawe. In Autumn 2021 Taub created and produced a 3-day festival Beethoven: Innovator – a 250th Celebration and in March 2022 he created and produced a week-long festival Expressionism: Emotions Unchained. In 2023 Taub moved his Musica Viva Concert Series to a venue for which he led acoustic refurbishment, Levinsky Hall. In addition to solo and chamber music concerts, his newly created Musica Viva Sinfonia, comprised of top London musicians, made its debut in February 2025. Recent Muscia Viva concerts have garnered national media attention and have been performed to sold-out houses. Robert Taub recently returned from several performances – solo recitals and chamber music concerts – in the FICA21 Festival in Xalapa, Mexico.
Robert Taub also enjoys swimming, scuba diving, reading – particularly history – and learning about mechanical devices. He has rebuilt several Italian sport motorcycles from the 1970s that he rides regularly.