David Aaron Carpenter DREAMTIME

Dreamtime features the titular solo viola work by Robert Mann (1920), founding member of the Juillard String Quartet and its first violinist for 52 years, as well as Frank Bridge's Lament. Frank Bridge (1879-1941) is one of the most outstanding composers for viola. The longest work on the disc is Brahms's Clarinet Quintet Op. 115 in the version for viola and string quartet.
The starting point for this release was an invitation David Aaron Carpenter received from the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra to perform a chamber music concert with some of their soloists. Brahms's Quintet and Bridge's Lament are live recording from this concert in February 2013.
David Aaron Carpenter was featured on the cover of The Strad magazine in August 2013 and, a few months earlier, was the subject of a three-page article in the New York Times. He is thrilled to release this latest recording with members of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. "Making music with these incredible musicians," he says, "has been one of the inspiring highlights of my career."
David Aaron Carpenter's first recording, released in 2009 and featuring his own viola arrangement of the Elgar Cello Concerto (after Lionel Tertis) and the Schnittke concerto with Eschenbach was an international success, winning the coveted ‘Editor's Choice' accolade from Gramophone. Further releases on Ondine include Berlioz's Harold in Italy and Paganini's Sonata per la Grand Viola with Vladimir Ashkenazy and the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra as well as a world premiere recording of the recently rediscovered Viola Concertos of "the Swedish Mozart" Joseph Martin Kraus. (Ondine)

David Aaron Carpenter / Philharmonia Orchestra / Christoph Eschenbach ELGAR & SCHNITTKE Viola Concertos

23-year-old violist David Aaron Carpenter has recently emerged as one of the world's most promising young talents. This recording, his debut album, couples two concertos: a viola arrangement of Sir Edward Elgar's famous Cello Concerto and the Viola Concerto (1985) by Alfred Schnittke. Christoph Eschenbach leads the Philharmonia Orchestra. David Aaron Carpenter adapted much of the Elgar Concerto himself, using the well-known and Elgar-sanctioned arrangement completed by Lionel Tertis in 1930 as a basis.

Since making his orchestral debut in 2005 with The Philadelphia Orchestra under Christoph Eschenbach, David Aaron Carpenter has been performing with leading musicians and orchestras in the United States and Europe. In 2006, he won the the prestigious Walter E. Naumburg Viola Competition. In 2007, he became the first American and so far the youngest protégé for the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative and the protégé of world-renowned violinist and violist Pinchas Zukerman. He was chosen among an international selection that included every violinist and violist of his generation.

David Aaron Carpenter has been acclaimed as producing, "a seductively rich sound and demonstrating both a forceful interpretive personality and remarkable control of his instrument," (The New York Times) and, "whose beautiful modulated tone makes a striking impression." (The Strad)

David Aaron Carpenter / Vladimir Ashkenazy / Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra BERLIOZ Harold in Italy PAGANINI Sonata per la Gran Viola e Orchestra

For his second CD release, 25-year-old New York-born violist David Aaron Carpenter is joined by Vladimir Ashkenazy who leads the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra. Together they perform the Symphony with Viola obbligato, Harold in Italy, which Berlioz originally wrote on a commission from Paganini. The present recording features, for the first time, a more virtuoso soloist part written for Paganini.

The coupling is a showpiece, which Nicolò Paganini wrote after rejecting his earlier Berlioz commission; "The Sonata per la Gran Viola displays the highest virtuosic writing for this instrument," says David Aaron Carpenter, who defines his mission as focusing attention on the viola as a great solo string instrument in its own right.

Also included is Berlioz's cheerful Overture to the opera Béatrice et Bénédict.

Recipient of the 2011 Leonard Bernstein Award (on August 27, 2011) and winner of the 2010 Avery Fisher Career Grant, David has emerged as one of the world's most promising young artists. In 2006, he won the prestigious Walter E. Naumburg Viola Competition and in 2007, he became protégé for The Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative, being the youngest in this mentorship programme's history. David Aaron Carpenter has been the protégé of several major international musical figures, such as Pinchas Zukerman, Yuri Bashmet and Christoph Eschenbach.

This release follows on the great success of David's debut recording, with the Philharmonia Orchestra and conductor Christoph Eschenbach, of the Elgar and Schnittke concertos (ODE 1153-2). (Ondine)

David Aaron Carpenter / Tapiola Sinfonietta JOSEPH MARTIN KRAUS Viola Concertos

This new release features the first-ever commercial recording of three newly discovered, substantial viola concertos by German-born Swedish composer Joseph Martin Kraus (1756-1792). Kraus, one of the most innovative composers of his time, was equated by Haydn to W.A. Mozart as the only two geniuses he knew. The featured works are the only known music from the Classical Era to demand the utmost virtuosity from the viola soloist. 

David Aaron Carpenter has emerged as one of the world's most promising young artists and is Recipient of the 2011 Leonard Bernstein Award and of the 2010 Avery Fisher Career Grant. In the words of David P. Stearns of The Philadelphia Inquire, "If there's such a thing as an overnight-star violist, it's David Aaron Carpenter. (...) Carpenter is in a league with the best."

This release follows on the great success of David's earlier recordings, including the Elgar and Schnittke concertos with the Philharmonia Orchestra and conductor Christoph Eschenbach, which was given an ‘Editor's Choice' accolade by Gramophone.

One of the leading chamber orchestras internationally, the Tapiola Sinfonietta has made acclaimed recordings of Classical repertoire, including the Complete Beethoven Piano Concertos with piano soloist Olli Mustonen. (Ondine)

David Aaron Carpenter / Salomé Chamber Orchestra THE 12 SEASONS

There is no shortage of recordings of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, but this one really is different. First of all, it is played on the viola, not on the violin – by David Aaron Carpenter. He has been described by the German newspaper Die Welt as “a new star at the forefront of violists”, by the Helsinki Times as playing “like a young god” and by Gramophone as a player of “superlative assurance and magnetic conviction". When he made his debut at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall in in 2007, the New York Times praised his “seductively rich sound … forceful interpretive personality and remarkable control of his instrument,” and his mentors have included such distinguished musical figures as Pinchas Zukerman, Yuri Bashmet and Christoph Eschenbach. Secondly, Vivaldi’s Baroque concertos are placed in a new light, since they are programmed alongside far more recent works inspired by the cycle of spring, summer, autumn and winter: Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas (Four Seasons of Buenos Aires), written between 1965 and 1970 by Argentina’s King of Tango, Astor Piazzolla, and A Manhattan Four Seasons by the Ukrainian-American composer Alexey Shor, premiered in 2013. This CD represents the first time that the works by Vivaldi and Piazzolla have been recorded in a version for viola.

Alexey Shor wrote his work – moody, mellow and immediately appealing – in his capacity as composer-in-residence with the Manhattan-based Salomé Chamber Orchestra, which David Aaron Carpenter founded with his violin-playing sister and brother, Lauren and Sean. The orchestra generally plays without a conductor and is therefore headless… hence its striking name, inspired by the biblical princess who demanded the decapitation of John the Baptist. It was founded by the Carpenter siblings in 2009 with the declared aim of achieving “a dynamic balance of novelty, tradition and hard work”. As Lauren Carpenter told the New York Times, “It’s great to try and change the face of what classical music concerts can be.”