Irvine Arditti

Irvine Arditti serves as first violinist and leader of the Arditti Quartet, which he helped establish during his student years at London’s Royal Academy of Music in 1974. Between 1978 and 1980 he held the post of co-concertmaster with the London Symphony Orchestra before stepping away to focus more fully on the quartet, a decision that proved pivotal: the Arditti String Quartet has since become a central force in contemporary chamber music. Over the decades the ensemble has commissioned an extensive catalogue of new pieces from leading composers, among them John Cage, Philip Glass, Helmut Lachenmann, Sofiya Gubaidulina, and Wolfgang Rihm. Between 1982 and 1996 the quartet conducted yearly master classes at the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music.

Arditti is equally esteemed as a solo performer specializing in modern violin concertos. His Mode Records release of John Cage’s Freeman Etudes stands among his best-known recordings; he had earlier given the work its premiere. He has also introduced concertos by Luciano Berio, Brian Ferneyhough, and Iannis Xenakis. While both the quartet and its leader have appeared on numerous labels, their most frequent partnership was with Disques Montaigne, later absorbed into Naïve Classical. The group continues to present complete cycles of quartets by Elliott Carter, Hans Werner Henze, and Arnold Schoenberg. Its recorded output has earned multiple Deutsche Schallplatten prizes and Gramophone Awards.