Shmuel Ashkenasi

Shmuel Ashkenasi (born January 11, 1941 in Tel Aviv ) is an Israeli violinist and teacher.

Life

Shmuel Ashkenasi studied at the Tel Aviv Music Academy with Ilona Feher , also the teacher of Pinchas Zukerman , Itzhak Perlman and Shlomo Mintz . In 1958 he came to the United States on a scholarship to study with Efrem Zimbalist at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia .

He received international attention in 1959 as a winner of the Belgian Queen Elisabeth Competition and in 1962 at the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, where he won the silver medal (2nd prize).

Concert tours as a soloist have taken him twice to the Soviet Union, countries in the Far East, Israel and regularly to Europe. He worked with the most important orchestras in Europe and the USA under conductors such as Leopold Stokowski , Karl Böhm , Rudolf Kempe , Erich Leinsdorf , Rafael Kubelík , Stanislaw Skrowaczewski and Karel Ančerl .

Ashkenasi's recording of Niccolò Paganini's Violin Concertos No. 1 and No. 2 with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra under Heribert Esser, released in 1968 by Deutsche Grammophon, is remarkable and widely praised .

In 1969 Ashkenasi founded the Vermeer Quartet , which over the years has been under contract with various record companies, including Naxos and Teldec (Telefunken-Decca). The entire discography includes all the string quartets by Ludwig van Beethoven , Tchaikovsky and Bartók as well as works by Joseph Haydn , Franz Schubert , Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy , Johannes Brahms , Antonín Dvořák , Giuseppe Verdi , Dmitri Dmitrijewitsch Shostakowitsch and Alfred Schnittke . The quartet members were professors and artists in residence at Northern Illinois University near Chicago. Ashkenasi also held a temporary visiting professorship at the Lübeck University of Music . In 2007, the quartet ended its active activity after 38 years, during which Shmuel Ashkenasi worked continuously as primary violinist, while the positions of second violin and viola changed several times.

He has been teaching at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia since 2007 and, for some time, at the Mannes College of Music in New York .

Boris Schwarz : Great masters of the violin. From Corelli and Vivaldi to Stern, Zukerman and Perlman . Simon and Schuster, New York 1983.
Kurtz Myers: Index to record reviews 1978–1983 . GK Hall, Boston, Ma. 1985.
Kurtz Myers: Index to record reviews 1984–1987 . GK Hall, Boston, Ma. 1989.
Ruth Renée Reif: The Stuttgart Philharmonic. A historical portrait . Edited by the Society of Friends of the Stuttgart Philharmonic. Silberburg-Verlag , Tübingen 1999, ISBN 3-87407-319-X .

personal data
SURNAME	Ashkenasi, Shmuel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Israeli violinist and teacher
DATE OF BIRTH	January 11, 1941
PLACE OF BIRTH	Tel Aviv