PAUL NEUBAUER, VIOLA (2021)
Violist Paul Neubauer’s exceptional musicality and effortless playing led the New York Times to call him “a master musician”. He is the newly appointed Artistic Director of the Mostly Music series in New Jersey. This season he will be featured in a Live from Lincoln Center broadcast with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and will premiere a new work for viola and piano by Liliya Ugay written to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Carson McCullers’s birth. He also appears with his trio with soprano Susanna Phillips and pianist Anne-Marie McDermott, and as soloist with orchestra. His recording of the Aaron Kernis Viola Concerto with the Royal Northern Sinfonia, a work he premiered with the St. Paul Chamber, Los Angeles Chamber, and Idyllwild Arts orchestras and the Chautauqua Symphony will be released on Signum Records.
A two-time Grammy nominee, in 2016, Mr. Neubauer released a solo album of music recorded at Music@Menlo. His recording of piano quartets with Daniel Hope, David Finckel and Wu Han was recently released on the Deutsche Grammophon label. Joan Tower’s Purple Rhapsody with Timothy Russsell and the Pro Music Chamber Orchestra, commissioned for him by seven orchestras and the Koussevitsky Foundation, was released by Summit Records. Other recorded works that were written for him include: Wild Purple for solo viola by Joan Tower for Naxos; Viola Rhapsody a concerto by Henri Lazarof on Centaur Records; and Soul Garden for viola and chamber ensemble by Derek Bermel on CRI. His recording of the Walton Viola Concerto was recently re-released on Decca and his Schumann recital album with pianist Anne-Marie McDermott was recorded for Image Recordings.
During his six year tenure with the New York Philharmonic, Paul Neubauer appeared as soloist with that orchestra in over twenty performances. One particularly memorable performance was the New York premiere of Krzysztof Penderecki’s Viola Concerto with Penderecki conducting. He has appeared with over 100 orchestras throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the San Francisco, National, St. Louis, Dallas, Indianapolis, Puerto Rico and Cincinnati symphonies, the Bavarian State Radio Orchestra, the Helsinki Philharmonic, the Hungarian Radio Orchestra, the Orchester der Beethovenhalle Bonn (with whom he performed the world premiere of the newly revised version of Bartók’s Viola Concerto), the Kansas City Symphony (premiering Tobias Picker’s Viola Concerto), the English Chamber Orchestra (performing the world premiere of Gordon Jacob’s Viola Concerto no. 2), and the Knoxville Symphony (premiering David Ott’s Viola Concerto). Mr. Neubauer made his Carnegie Hall Debut playing the first performance of Joel Philip Friedman’s Concerto for Viola and Orchestra with the National Orchestral Association. He has also appeared with the Stockholm Chamber Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Hong Kong Philharmonic, Ensemble orchestral de Paris, Orquesta Filharmonica de Buenos Aires, Bournemouth Symphony, and the Taipei National Symphony. In Rome, he has performed with violinist Vladimir Spivakov and the Orchestra of the National Academy of Santa Cecelia. Other collaborations include performances with Andre Watts and Vladimir Feltsman at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; with Joshua Bell and Steven Isserlis at London’s Wigmore and Queen Elizabeth Hall’s; and with Pinchas Zukerman, James Galway, Vladimir Spivakov and Alicia de Larrocha at the Mostly Mozart Festival. He has also collaborated with the Emerson, Shanghai, Juilliard, Cleveland, Fine Arts, Orion, Borromeo, Miami, and Brentano quartets.
Mr. Neubauer’s musical activities are consistently creative. In a pair of highly acclaimed New York premieres, he performed Bartók’s Viola Concerto (which he helped to revise along with Bartók’s son, Peter and composer Nelson Dellamaggiore), and Max Bruch’s Double Concerto for Clarinet and Viola with clarinetist David Shifrin. He also gave the North American premiere of the Detlev Müller-Siemens Viola Concerto and Richard Suter’s Three Nocturnes for Viola and Orchestra. He has been featured as a special guest artist of the New York City Ballet at Lincoln Center in performances of Viola Alone, and on the popular radio show A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor. He was very successful as the director of Voilà Viola, a viola festival held at Merkin Hall in New York, and has toured the United States with pianist Christopher O’Riley, violinist Pamela Frank, and cellist Carter Brey.
In addition to his innumerable orchestral, recital, and festival appearances, Paul Neubauer is accessible to a broad range of television and radio audiences through Live from Lincoln Center telecasts with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. He has been featured on CBS’s Sunday Morning; in recital on PBS’s Front Row Center and In Concert; on Argentinean, Brazilian, and Mexican television as soloist with orchestras; on National Public Radio’s Performance Today and Morning Edition, on St. Paul Sunday Morning, as well as on international radio performances throughout the world.
Among Mr. Neubauer’s numerous awards are First Prize in the Mae M. Whitaker International Competition, the D’Angelo International Competition, and the Lionel Tertis International Viola Competition. He has been the recipient of a Solo Recitalist’s Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and a special prize from the Naumburg Foundation, which awarded him an Alice Tully Hall recital debut. Moreover, the Epstein Young Artists Program has sponsored him and he was the first violist chosen to receive an Avery Fisher Career Grant.
Born in Los Angeles and currently residing in New York City, Mr. Neubauer studied with Alan de Veritch, Paul Doktor, and William Primrose. He holds a Master’s Degree from The Juilliard School where he is now a member of the faculty. He also teaches at Mannes College.