US viola player and teacher David Schwartz has died at the age
of 96. In a varied career, he performed as a soloist, a session
player, and in orchestras and chamber groups.
Born in 1916 in Detroit, Schwartz studied with Louis Bailly and Max
Aronoff at the Curtis Institute of Music. He joined the Cleveland
Orchestra’s viola section in 1936, being promoted to principal
violist three years later. In 1941, soon after the US entered the
Second World War, he enlisted as a sergeant in the Air Force, where
he was recruited by Glenn Miller for his Army Air Force Band.
After the war, Schwartz performed with the WOR Sinfonietta in New
York, before returning to his home town to play with the Detroit
Symphony under Paul Paray. He performed with the NBC Staff
Orchestra and Symphony Orchestra under Arturo Toscanini, and was
principal violist of the Puerto Rico Symphony for its inaugural
season under Pablo Casals. Schwartz also performed as a soloist at
Carnegie Hall in the early 1960s.
In 1958 Schwartz joined violinists Henri Temianka and Charles
Libove and cellist Lucien Laporte in the Paganini Quartet. He spent
three years with the group, touring the US, Asia and South America.
From 1962 to 1969 he was a faculty member of the Yale Summer School
of Music and Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, where he formed the
Yale Quartet with violinists Broadus Erle and Yoko Matsuda and
cellist Aldo Parisot. Among the quartet’s releases is a benchmark
recording of Beethoven’s late quartets.
In 1970 Schwartz moved to California, where he spent the rest of
his life. He spent a year as a professor at the California
Institute of the Arts before starting as a studio musician. His
playing can be heard on several recordings of John Williams scores,
including Jaws, E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind
and Raiders of the Lost Ark. In his later years he served
vice president of the Recording Musicians Association of Los
Angeles, an arm of the Musician's Union, among other roles. Among
the violas he used during his career were a Maggini, a 1625
Brothers Amati and a 1711 Michael Albani.
Photo: David Beers (c.1970)
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