We study the connection between Zamolodchikov operator-valued relations in Liouville field theory and in the SL(2, R) k WZNW model. In particular, the classical relations in SL(2, R) k can be formulated as a classical Liouville hierarchy in terms of the isotopic coordinates, and their covariance is easily understood in the framework of the AdS 3 /CF T 2 correspondence.Conversely, we find a closed expression for the classical Liouville decoupling operators in terms of the so called uniformizing Schwarzian operators and show that the associated uniformizing parameter plays the same role as the isotopic coordinates in SL(2, R) k . The solutions of the j-th classical decoupling equation in the WZNW model span a spin j reducible representation of SL(2, R). Likewise, we show that in Liouville theory solutions of the classical decoupling equations span spin j representations of SL(2, R), which is interpreted as the isometry group of the hyperbolic upper half-plane. We also discuss the connection with the Hamiltonian reduction of SL(2, R) k WZNW model to Liouville theory.