Atar Arad, Viola

Biography

Atar Arad was born in Tel Aviv, where he began his early musical education and violin studies. In 1968 he was one of a few young artists to be selected to study in the renowned Chapelle Musicale Reine Elisabeth under the patronage of the Queen of Belgium.

In 1971, drawn by the deep, warm sound of the viola and its broad but unfamiliar repertoire, he decided to devote himself to this instrument and its music. The following year, in July 1972, in his first appearance as a violist, he won the City of London Prize as a laureate of the Carl Flesch Competition for violin and viola. Two months later he was awarded the First Prize at the International Viola Competition in Geneva by a unanimous decision of the jury.

Numerous concerts followed -- as soloist with major orchestras, and in recitals at some of Europe's most prestigious festivals. Arad's recordings for Telefunken are widely acclaimed. His Sonata per la Grand' Viola e Orchestra by Paganini was considered by stringed-instrument lovers and critics alike to be an astonishing demonstration of the technical capabilities of the viola. His album in collaboration with pianist Evelyne Brancart, was praised by High Fidelity Magazine as being "...perhaps the best-played viola recital ever recorded".

In 1980 Arad moved from London to the U.S. in order to become a member of the Cleveland Quartet for the next seven years. With this great Quartet he toured throughout the U.S., South America, Western and Eastern Europe, Israel and Japan, collaborating with many leading musicians (such as pianists Istomin, Curzon and Ax, violists Schidloff and Laredo, Cellists Ma and Rostropovich, flutist Gallway and clarinetist Stolzmann to name a few), recording for labels such as RCA, CBS and Telarc, and appearing in music festivals including Aspen, Berlin, Edinburgh, Flanders, Israel, New York Mostly Mozart and Carnegie Hall, Paris, Salzburg, and many more. During that time he held the position of a Professor of Viola at the Eastman School of Music.

Arad was an artist/faculty member at the Aspen School and Festival. He also taught at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University in Houston, TX, and was an artist/lecturer at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

He currently serves as Professor of Music (viola) at the Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University, Bloomington and in the summers he also teaches at the Steans Institute for Young Artists (Ravinia Festival) in Chicago, Domaine Forget Academy of the Art and in Keshet Eilon Music Center, Israel. He regularly gives master classes at the IMS in Prussia Cove.

Arad served as a regular guest artist in a great number of musical venues, such as Houston's Da Camera Society, Seattle Chamber Music Festival, the Upper Galilee Chamber Music Days (Israel), the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, Chamber Music International in Dallas, Sitka Festival, Chautauqua Festival, Ravinia Music Festival, Orford and Domaine Forget. A frequent guest with today?s leading chamber ensembles, Arad has performed, among others, with the Guarneri, Emersson, Tokyo, Mendelssohn, American, Chillingrian, Vermeer, New Zealand and the Orion string quartets.

Arad has published a number of essays: The Thirteen Pages (The American String Teacher, Winter 1988) dealing with the authenticity of Bartok's Viola Concerto; Walton As Scapino (The Strad, February 1989), which reveals a number of unusual compositional procedures used by William Walton in his Viola Concerto; Scaling New Heights (Strings, December 2008) with new ideas on practicing scales. For Strings (March 2006) he also wrote notes on his own Viola Concerto.

A late-bloomer composer, Arad wrote his first musical composition - a Solo Sonata for Viola in 1992. The Sonata was premiered in 1993 as part of Arad's recital at the Viola Congress in Chicago and was published by the Israel Music Institute (1995). His student, violist Roland Glassl, the winner of 1997 Tertis International Competition gave the London premier of the Sonata in 1998 at the Wigmore Hall.

In 1998 Arad completed his String Quartet, premiered in Bloomington on April 1999 by the Corigliano Quartet. He premiered his own Viola Concerto (2005) in Bloomington, Brussels and, recently, in Stockholm with conductors Uriel Segal, Ronald Zollman and Michael Bartosz, respectively.

Other compositions include Six Caprices for Viola (which he performed in the 2004 Viola Congress in Minnesota along with Tibor Serly’s rarely played Viola Concerto), Toccatina Alla Turk for two violins (viewed by the thousands on YouTube), and Esther for violin and viola. His Tikvah for solo viola was commissioned by the ARD for the 2008 Munich International Competition and was included as well on the repertoire list of the Max Rostal International Competition in Berlin.

His most recent composition, Listen (three poems by W.S. Merwin) for tenor, clarinet, viola, cello and bass, was commissioned by the International Musicians Seminar and will be featured on its concert tour in England, September 2010.

Atar Arad plays on a viola by Niccolo Amati.