David Schwartz (violist)
Encyclopedia
David Schwartz is an American violist and music instructor. Schwartz's career spanned orchestral music, chamber music, and studio recording, but he is most recognized for his chamber music performances and recordings with the Yale
and Paganini Quartet
s.
at age 20. At age 23 he was promoted by Cleveland conductor Artur Rodzinski
to the role of Principal Violist. He performed and toured with Leopold Stokowski
's All-American Youth Orchestra. During World War II, he enlisted in the Air Force and became lead violist of the Glenn Miller
Army Air Force Band in 1943. After the war he performed with the Detroit Symphony under Paul Paray
, the NBC Staff Orchestra and the NBC Symphony Orchestra
under Arturo Toscanini
and was principal violist of the Puerto Rico Symphony for its inaugural season under Pablo Casals
. He also performed solo at Carnegie Hall
in New York City in the early 1960s.
, based out of Los Angeles. While teaching viola at Yale he joined the Yale Quartet
with Broadus Erle
(violin), Yoko Matsuda (violin), and Aldo Parisot
(cello). Their first recording was nominated in 1967 for a Grammy Award
. This ensemble is best known for their recordings between 1967 and 1971 of the Late Beethoven quartets. The American Record Guide considered the Yale Quartet's Grammy-nominated recording of the Quartet No. 15 in A minor, for example, to be "one of the finest performances of a late Beethoven quartet ever to have been put on record." Schwartz has recorded for CRI, Kapp Records, and Vanguard Recording Society. He has also given world premiere performances of pieces by Mel Powell
, Arnold Franchetti
, Richmonde Browne, Peter Sculthorpe
, and Frank Lewin
.
, he moved his family West to accept a position as a full-time professor of viola at the California Institute of the Arts
. He taught there for one year before embarking on a career as a studio musician.
Schwartz became sought after as a studio musician and was principle violist in numerous motion pictures and recordings. His film credits include The Godfather
, Jaws
, E.T.
, Close Encounters of the Third Kind
and Raiders of the Lost Ark
and he served for many years as composer/conductor John Williams
' principal violist. He also performed on recordings by many prominent jazz and pop musicians including Frank Sinatra
, Johnny Mathis
, Bill Evans
, Dianna Ross and The Supremes
, Sérgio Mendes
, Lionel Richie
and John Hiatt
. He was five times voted Most Valuable Player by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences and then received the Emeritus MVP award.
Yale Quartet
The Yale Quartet is a string quartet based at Yale University composed of musicians in the Yale School of Music and originally led by Broadus Erle from the time he arrived in Yale in 1960...
and Paganini Quartet
Paganini Quartet
The Paganini Quartet was a virtuoso string quartet founded by its first violinist, Henri Temianka, in 1946. The quartet drew its name from the fact that all four of its instruments, made by Antonio Stradivari , had once been owned by the great Italian violinist and composer Niccolo Paganini...
s.
Musical education
Schwartz studied viola at Curtis Institute under teachers Louis Bailly and Max Aronoff.Orchestral career
Schwartz joined the Cleveland OrchestraCleveland Orchestra
The Cleveland Orchestra is an American orchestra based in Cleveland, Ohio. It is one of the five American orchestras informally referred to as the "Big Five". Founded in 1918, the orchestra plays most of its concerts at Severance Hall...
at age 20. At age 23 he was promoted by Cleveland conductor Artur Rodzinski
Artur Rodzinski
Artur Rodziński was a Polish conductor of opera and symphonic music. He is especially noted for his tenures as music director of the Cleveland Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic in the 1930s and 1940s.-Biography:...
to the role of Principal Violist. He performed and toured with Leopold Stokowski
Leopold Stokowski
Leopold Anthony Stokowski was a British-born, naturalised American orchestral conductor, well known for his free-hand performing style that spurned the traditional baton and for obtaining a characteristically sumptuous sound from many of the great orchestras he conducted.In America, Stokowski...
's All-American Youth Orchestra. During World War II, he enlisted in the Air Force and became lead violist of the Glenn Miller
Glenn Miller
Alton Glenn Miller was an American jazz musician , arranger, composer, and bandleader in the swing era. He was one of the best-selling recording artists from 1939 to 1943, leading one of the best known "Big Bands"...
Army Air Force Band in 1943. After the war he performed with the Detroit Symphony under Paul Paray
Paul Paray
Paul Paray was a French conductor, organist and composer. He is best remembered in the United States for being the resident conductor of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra for more than a decade. He married Yolande Falck on 25 August 1944.-Biography:Paray's father, Auguste, was a sculptor and organist...
, the NBC Staff Orchestra and the NBC Symphony Orchestra
NBC Symphony Orchestra
The NBC Symphony Orchestra was a radio orchestra established by David Sarnoff of the National Broadcasting Company especially for conductor Arturo Toscanini...
under Arturo Toscanini
Arturo Toscanini
Arturo Toscanini was an Italian conductor. One of the most acclaimed musicians of the late 19th and 20th century, he was renowned for his intensity, his perfectionism, his ear for orchestral detail and sonority, and his photographic memory...
and was principal violist of the Puerto Rico Symphony for its inaugural season under Pablo Casals
Pablo Casals
Pau Casals i Defilló , known during his professional career as Pablo Casals, was a Spanish Catalan cellist and conductor. He is generally regarded as the pre-eminent cellist of the first half of the 20th century, and one of the greatest cellists of all time...
. He also performed solo at Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....
in New York City in the early 1960s.
Chamber music
In his 20s, Schwartz performed with the Walden String Quartet (Homer Schmitt, violin; Bernard Goodman, violin; Robert Swenson, cello) in concert hall and radio broadcast chamber music programs. Later he performed with the Cremona String Trio. From 1958–1960 he toured Asia, South America and the United States as violist of the Paganini QuartetPaganini Quartet
The Paganini Quartet was a virtuoso string quartet founded by its first violinist, Henri Temianka, in 1946. The quartet drew its name from the fact that all four of its instruments, made by Antonio Stradivari , had once been owned by the great Italian violinist and composer Niccolo Paganini...
, based out of Los Angeles. While teaching viola at Yale he joined the Yale Quartet
Yale Quartet
The Yale Quartet is a string quartet based at Yale University composed of musicians in the Yale School of Music and originally led by Broadus Erle from the time he arrived in Yale in 1960...
with Broadus Erle
Broadus Erle
Broadus Erle was an American violinist.Born in Chicago and reared in Toronto, Erle began his violin studies at age 3, taught by his mother, Brownie Earl. At age 5, he started taking lessons from Pasquale Briglia, concertmaster of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra...
(violin), Yoko Matsuda (violin), and Aldo Parisot
Aldo Parisot
Aldo Simoes Parisot is a Brazilian-born American cellist and cello teacher, was formerly a member of the Juilliard School faculty, and currently is serving as a professor of music at the Yale School of Music....
(cello). Their first recording was nominated in 1967 for a Grammy Award
Grammy Award
A Grammy Award — or Grammy — is an accolade by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States to recognize outstanding achievement in the music industry...
. This ensemble is best known for their recordings between 1967 and 1971 of the Late Beethoven quartets. The American Record Guide considered the Yale Quartet's Grammy-nominated recording of the Quartet No. 15 in A minor, for example, to be "one of the finest performances of a late Beethoven quartet ever to have been put on record." Schwartz has recorded for CRI, Kapp Records, and Vanguard Recording Society. He has also given world premiere performances of pieces by Mel Powell
Mel Powell
Mel Powell was a jazz pianist and composer of classical music.Mel Epstein was born to Russian Jewish parents, Milton Epstein and Mildred Mark Epstein, and began playing piano as a child. He performed jazz professionally in New York City as a teenager...
, Arnold Franchetti
Arnold Franchetti
Arnold Franchetti was a composer born in Lucca, Italy. Young Franchetti studied composition and piano with his father, the Baron Alberto Franchetti...
, Richmonde Browne, Peter Sculthorpe
Peter Sculthorpe
Peter Joshua Sculthorpe AO OBE is an Australian composer. Much of his music has resulted from an interest in the music of Australia's neighbours as well as from the impulse to bring together aspects of native Australian music with that of the heritage of the West...
, and Frank Lewin
Frank Lewin
Frank Lewin was an American composer and teacher.-Biography:Frank Lewin was born March 27, 1925, in Breslau, Germany. He and his family escaped from Germany in 1939, spent a year in Cuba, and came to the United States in 1940...
.
Teaching career
Schwartz was faculty member in the Yale School of Music and Art from 1962-69. He taught numerous master classes in seminar and festival programs, including Swarthmore College (1959), Coe College (1961), Brigham Young University (1959-62 and '64), the University of Hartford (1962-64), the American String Teacher's Association String Seminar, Hartford, CT (1965), and the Experimental Instrumental Performance Clinic, Sarasota, FL (1966-68). In 1970, on the invitation of Mel PowellMel Powell
Mel Powell was a jazz pianist and composer of classical music.Mel Epstein was born to Russian Jewish parents, Milton Epstein and Mildred Mark Epstein, and began playing piano as a child. He performed jazz professionally in New York City as a teenager...
, he moved his family West to accept a position as a full-time professor of viola at the California Institute of the Arts
California Institute of the Arts
The California Institute of the Arts, commonly referred to as CalArts, is located in Valencia, in Los Angeles County, California. It was incorporated in 1961 as the first degree-granting institution of higher learning in the United States created specifically for students of both the visual and the...
. He taught there for one year before embarking on a career as a studio musician.
Studio work
After leaving California Institute of the ArtsCalifornia Institute of the Arts
The California Institute of the Arts, commonly referred to as CalArts, is located in Valencia, in Los Angeles County, California. It was incorporated in 1961 as the first degree-granting institution of higher learning in the United States created specifically for students of both the visual and the...
Schwartz became sought after as a studio musician and was principle violist in numerous motion pictures and recordings. His film credits include The Godfather
The Godfather
The Godfather is a 1972 American epic crime film directed by Francis Ford Coppola, based on the 1969 novel by Mario Puzo. With a screenplay by Puzo, Coppola and an uncredited Robert Towne, the film stars Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall, Sterling Hayden, John Marley, Richard...
, Jaws
Jaws (film)
Jaws is a 1975 American horror-thriller film directed by Steven Spielberg and based on Peter Benchley's novel of the same name. In the story, the police chief of Amity Island, a fictional summer resort town, tries to protect beachgoers from a giant man-eating great white shark by closing the beach,...
, E.T.
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial is a 1982 American science fiction film co-produced and directed by Steven Spielberg, written by Melissa Mathison and starring Henry Thomas, Dee Wallace, Robert MacNaughton, Drew Barrymore, and Peter Coyote...
, Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Close Encounters of the Third Kind is a 1977 science fiction film written and directed by Steven Spielberg. The film stars Richard Dreyfuss, François Truffaut, Melinda Dillon, Teri Garr, Bob Balaban, and Cary Guffey...
and Raiders of the Lost Ark
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Raiders of the Lost Ark is a 1981 American action-adventure film directed by Steven Spielberg, produced by George Lucas, and starring Harrison Ford. It is the first film in the Indiana Jones franchise...
and he served for many years as composer/conductor John Williams
John Williams
John Towner Williams is an American composer, conductor, and pianist. In a career spanning almost six decades, he has composed some of the most recognizable film scores in the history of motion pictures, including the Star Wars saga, Jaws, Superman, the Indiana Jones films, E.T...
' principal violist. He also performed on recordings by many prominent jazz and pop musicians including Frank Sinatra
Frank Sinatra
Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra was an American singer and actor.Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became an unprecedentedly successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, after being signed to Columbia Records in 1943. Being the idol of the...
, Johnny Mathis
Johnny Mathis
John Royce "Johnny" Mathis is an American singer of popular music. Starting his career with singles of standards, he became highly popular as an album artist, with several dozen of his albums achieving gold or platinum status, and 73 making the Billboard charts...
, Bill Evans
Bill Evans
William John Evans, known as Bill Evans was an American jazz pianist. His use of impressionist harmony, inventive interpretation of traditional jazz repertoire, and trademark rhythmically independent, "singing" melodic lines influenced a generation of pianists including: Chick Corea, Herbie...
, Dianna Ross and The Supremes
The Supremes
The Supremes, an American female singing group, were the premier act of Motown Records during the 1960s.Originally founded as The Primettes in Detroit, Michigan, in 1959, The Supremes' repertoire included doo-wop, pop, soul, Broadway show tunes, psychedelic soul, and disco...
, Sérgio Mendes
Sergio Mendes
Sérgio Santos Mendes is a Brazilian musician. He has released over thirty-five albums, and plays bossa nova heavily crossed with jazz and funk....
, Lionel Richie
Lionel Richie
Lionel Brockman Richie, Jr. , is an American singer-songwriter, musician and record producer. Since 1968, he has been a member of the musical group Commodores signed to Motown Records...
and John Hiatt
John Hiatt
John Hiatt is an American rock guitarist, pianist, singer, and songwriter. He has played a variety of musical styles on his albums, including New Wave, blues and country. Hiatt has been nominated for several Grammy Awards - although he has never won- and has been awarded a variety of other...
. He was five times voted Most Valuable Player by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences and then received the Emeritus MVP award.