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blebul1a.gif (1048 bytes)Irvine Arditti (violin)
Elliott Carter and Irvine Arditti, New York, January 2004
photo Robin D'amore

QUOTE

Irvine Arditti, "a prophet amongst musicians"

Harrison Birtwistle 12.5.09

REVIEW

For the fourth year in a row, Ultima, Oslo's festival of contemporary music, has had the good fortune to count violinist/new music missionary Irvine Arditti among its featured performers. Mr. Arditti has made a substantial career playing the edgiest of cutting-edge pieces, as both a soloist and the founder of the quartet that bears his name. Here, in a performance that showcased his formidable technique and his commitment to making music, Arditti showed why he is like money in the bank for the future of music.

Consider his performance with the Oslo Sinfonietta under the direction of Christian Eggen. The piece he played, a fiendishly complex rhapsody of sorts for soloist and 10-piece chamber ensemble, was Luca Francesconi's Riti Neurali.3.studio sulla memoria (1991). Arditti lunged into the opening bars, slicing through each gesture as though his life depended upon his stabbing each and every note through the heart. Francesconi's music seems to require this approach: it is angular and full of energy, but the energy is somewhat scattered among a number of disparate ideas. Arditti pulled the ideas together, connecting passages that wouldn't otherwise connect to each other well; his attentive phrasing somehow made the score into song, even when the notes themselves seem only to pile up on one another.

                                                     Eric Valliere, Andante.com, October 2002

 

BIOGRAPHY

ENGLISH
In addition to his phenomenal career as first violinist of the Arditti Quartet, Irvine Arditti continues to excel as an extraordinary soloist. Born in London in 1953, Irvine Arditti began his studies at the Royal Academy of Music at the age of 16. He joined the London Symphony Orchestra in 1976 and after two years, at the age of 25, became its Co-Concert Master. He left the orchestra in 1980 in order to devote more time to the Arditti Quartet which he had formed while still a student.

During the past decade Irvine Arditti has given the world premières of a plethora of large scale works especially written for him. These include Xenakis’ Dox Orkh and Hosokawa’s Landscape III, both for violin and orchestra, as well as Ferneyhough’s Terrain, Francesconi’s Riti Neurali

and Body Electric, Dillon’s Vernal Showers and Harvey’s Scena, Pauset's Vita Nova, Reynolds Aspiration and Sciarrino's Le Stagioni Artificiali all for violin and ensemble.

He has appeared with many distinguished orchestras and ensembles including the Bayerische Rundfunk, BBC Symphony, Berlin Radio Symphony, Royal Concertgebouw, Junge Deutsche Philharmonie, Munich Philharmonic, Orchestre National de Paris, Het Residentie den Hague, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Asko Ensemble, Ensemble Contrechamps, London Sinfonietta, Nieuw Ensemble, Nouvel Ensemble Modern, Oslo Sinfonietta, Schoenberg Ensemble. His performances of many concertos have won acclaim by their composers, in particular Ligeti and Dutilleux.

In January 2012 there was a Nono concert in Madrid containing La Lontananza  and Hay que Caminar, where he was joined by Andre Richard for the sound projection and Ashot Sarkissjan for the duo.

On 12th May at Miller Theatre, New York, Irvine gave the premiere of a new work by Hilda Paredes, Senales for violin and ensemble with Signal, the New York based ensemble and their conductor Brad Lubman.

There are several performances planned this year of Cage's Freeman Etudes, to coincide with the centenery of the composer's birth.

These will take place in Darmstadt (17th July), Washington (6th September), Tokyo (25th September), Venice (10th October) and Huddersfield (20th November).

From 11th-14th March 2013 Irvine will be in residence at McGill University Montreal where he will coach performers and composers, as well as perform a recital with music by Xenakis, Reynolds, Dillon, Ferneyhough, Paredes and Sciarrino.

As well as having recorded over 180 CDs with the Arditti Quartet, Irvine Arditti has built an impressive catalogue of solo recordings. His CD of solo violin works by composers such as Carter, Estrada, Ferneyhough and Donatoni, as well as his recording of Nono’s La Lontananza, both on the label Montaigne Auvidis, have been awarded numerous prizes. His recording of Cage’s Freeman Etudes for solo violin, as part of his complete Cage violin music series for American label Mode, has made musical history. The series is now complete. The violin concertos by Berio, Xenakis and Mira, recorded in Moscow with the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra, are featured on a disc by Swedish label Bis.

Irvine Arditti's arrangement for Quartet of Cage's 44 Harmonies from Apartment House can be found on Mode Records.

The complete Mode recordings of Berio's Sequenza's, on which Irvine has recorded the violin sequenza has won the Deutsche Schallplattenpreis for 2007, and was awarded best contemporary music release by the Italian music magazine Amadeus in 2008.

DEUTSCH 

Biographie

 

Parallel zu seiner phänomenalen Karriere als Primarius des Arditti Quartetts ist Irvine Arditti als ein außergewöhnlicher Solist hervorzuheben. In London im Jahre 1953 geboren, begann Irvine Arditti sein Studium an der Royal Academy of Music im Alter von 16 Jahren. Er trat 1976 dem London Symphony Orchestra bei, das ihn bereits zwei Jahre später, mit 25 Jahren, zum ersten Konzertmeister berief. 1980 verließ er das Orchester, um sich auf die Arbeit mit seinem Quartett, das er schon als Student gegründet hatte, konzentrieren zu können.

 

Während des letzten Jahrzehnts hat Irvine Arditti eine große Anzahl von bedeutenden, eigens für ihn komponierten Werken uraufgeführt, darunter die Violinkonzerte Dox Orkh von Xenakis und Landscape III von Hosokawa, beides Solokonzerte für Violine und Ensemble, sowie Ferneyhoughs Terrain , Francesconis Riti Neurali und Body Electric, Dillons Vernal Showers, Harveys Scena, Pausets Vita Nova, Reynolds Aspiration und Sciarrinos Le Stagioni Artificiali. Er trat mit vielen herausragenden Orchestern und Ensembles auf, darunter das Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunk, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Deutsches Symphonie Orchester Berlin, Münchner Philharmoniker, Orchestre National de Paris, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Junge Deutsche Philharmonie, Asko Ensemble, Nieuw Ensemble, Schoenberg Ensemble, Oslo Sinfonietta, London Sinfonietta, Nouvel Ensemble Modern oder das Ensemble Contrechamps. Besonders gefeiert wurden seine Aufführungen der Violinkonzerte von Ligeti, mit dem Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, und von Dutilleux, mit Het Residentie Orkest, beide in Anwesenheit der Komponisten.

 

 

Neben den über 180 CDs, die Irvine Arditti mit dem Arditti Quartett aufgenommen hat, schuf er einen beeindruckenden Katalog an Solo-Aufnahmen. Hervorzuheben sind seine Einspielungen von Solo-Werken von Carter, Estrada, Ferneyhough und Danatoni sowie von Nono's La Lontananza bei Montaigne Auvidis, die beide zahllose Preise gewannen. Seine Aufnahme von Cage's Freeman Etudes für Solo-Violine, die als Teil seiner kompletten Cage-Einspielungen für die amerikanische Plattenfirma Mode entstand, hat Musikgeschichte geschrieben. Die Aufnahme der Violinkonzerte von Berio, Xenakis und Mira mit dem Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra sind auf einer CD der schwedischen Plattenfirma Bis erschienen. Zuletzt wurden bei Mode Cage's 44 Harmonies from Apartment House 1776 in der Bearbeitung für Quartett von Irvine Arditti veröffentlicht.

 

2011

 

 

 
   
 
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