Charles Castleman
violin
Charles Castleman, perhaps the world’s most active performer/pedagogue on the violin, has been soloist with the orchestras of Philadelphia, Boston, Brisbane, Chicago, Hong Kong, Moscow, Mexico City, New York, San Francisco, Seoul and Shanghai. Medalist at Tchaikovsky and Brussels, his Jongen Concerto is included in a Cypres CD set of the 17 best prize-winning performances of the Brussels Concours’ 50-year history.
Mr. Castleman was 2nd to record the Ysaye Solo Sonatas complete (for Nonesuch), in a CD made at the time of his unique performance of the set at Tully Hall, Lincoln Center, New York City, His other solo CDs include eight Hubay Csardases for Violin and Orchestra, and ten Sarasate virtuoso cameos on Music and Arts, Gershwin and Antheil on MusicMasters, and contemporary violin and harpsichord music for Albany. Selected by the Ford Foundation as one of the sixteen most important Concert Artists under the age of 35, he commissioned the David Amram Concerto, premiering it with Leonard Slatkin and the St. Louis Symphony, recording it for Newport Classic. He is dedicatee of “Lares Hercii” by Pulitzer winner Christopher Rouse.
Charles Castleman has performed at such international festivals as Marlboro, AFCM (Australia), Budapest, Fuefukigawa, Montreux, Shanghai, Sheffield, and the Vienna Festwoche. His recitals have been broadcast on NPR, BBC, in Berlin and in Paris.
Professor at the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami, Mr Castleman has conducted master-classes in London, Vienna, Helsinki, Kiev, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, Seoul, Tokyo, and all majr cities in Australia, Canada and New Zealand. His students have been winners at Brussels, Munich, Naumburg, and Szeryng, are in 30 professionally active chamber groups and are 1st desk players in 11 major orchestras. He is founder/director of THE CASTLEMAN QUARTET PROGRAM, in its 50th season, now at S.U.N.Y Fredonia, and Linfield College in McMinnville Oregon an intensive workshop in solo and chamber performance. Yo-Yo Ma has praised it as “the best program of its kind..a training ground in lifemanship.”
Charles Castleman’s long-term chamber music associations have included THE NEW STRING TRIO OF N.Y. with BASF recordings of Reger and Frank Martin and THE RAPHAEL TRIO with CDs of Dvorak, Mendelssohn, Beethoven, and Wolf-Ferrari for NONESUCH, SONY CLASSICAL, DISCOVER, UNICORN, and ASV, and with premieres by Rainer Bischof and Frederic Rzewski for the Vienna Festival and Kennedy Center.
Mr. Castleman earned degrees from Harvard, Curtis, and University of Pennsylvania. His teachers were Emanuel Ondricek (teaching assistant of Sevcik, Ysaye student) and Ivan Galamian, his most influential coaches David Oistrakh, Szeryng, and Gingold. He plays the “Marquis de Champeaux” Stradivarius and “Sammons” Goffriller from 1708, and chooses from over 80 bows.