Irvine Arditti at the 2012 highSCORE Festival

Irvine Arditti has been confirmed to appear at the 2012 edition of the highSCORE Festival! Arditti has had a distinguished career serving as the co-concert master of the London Symphony and then as one of the founding members of the world-renowned Arditti Quartet. The Royal Academy of Music trained violinist has been the recipient of many prominent awards, including the Ernst von Siemens lifetime achievement award and an honorary F.R.A.M from the Royal Academy.

Since the early days of his career, Mr. Arditti has been an advocate of new works. In 1974, while still a student, Mr. Arditti founded The Arditti Quartet which quickly became known around the world as one of the premier ensembles for contemporary music. Since its founding, the Arditti Quartet has had many pieces written specifically for them. The list of composers whose work they have premiered is impressive, including such composers as Britten, Cage, Carter, Kurtag, Ligeti, Stockhausen, Xenakis, Andriessen, and Adès among many others. For several decades (1982-1996) the Quartet was in residence at the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music where they served as string tutors to the festival’s students. Many of the standard repertoire of the 20th-century has been recorded by the ensemble. The group has made hundreds of recordings including the complete string quartets of the Second Viennese School, Stockhausen’s Helicopter Quartet, and the complete quartets of Luciano Berio.

In his career as a soloist, Mr. Arditti has been equally as fervent in championing the works of contemporary composers. With the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra he has recorded the Violin Concertos of Berio, Xenakis, and Mira. He has also performed with organizations such as the BBC Symphony, Berlin Radio Symphony, Royal Concertgebouw, Munich Philharmonic, Orchestre National de Paris, London Sinfonietta, and the Schoenberg Ensemble. His many performances have given him the opportunity to perform in most of the world’s greatest concert halls and music festivals. Also among his long list of credits are his numerous recorded performances of many of the great solo violin works, many of which have become the standard performances of the works. Among such recorded interpretations include Berio’s Sequenza VIII for Violin, and Cage’s Freeman Etudes for solo violin.

In our modern age filled with over-used hyperbole and over-hyped idioms, it can become difficult to truly convey a true understanding of a person’s distinction without appearing disingenuous or overblown; but Mr. Arditti’s stature and importance cannot possibly be overstated. At the festival he will present a lecture on contemporary violin performing practices. His presence at the 2012 edition of the highSCORE festival will be a wonderful addition to the already world-class faculty, an experience not to be missed!