Berkeley Symphony & Friends
violinist Florin Parvulescu
Solo Concert
Nov. 3
Florin Parvulescu
Berkeley Symphony & Friends
Florin Parvulescu
YSAŸE; SIX SONATAS FOR VIOLIN SOLO
Nov. 3 at 4pm
The Piedmont Center for the Arts will welcome the appearance of San Francisco Symphony violinist Florin Parvulescu on Sunday, November 3 for a rare solo concert of the Six Sonatas for Violin by Belgian composer and violinist Eugène-Auguste Ysaÿe. He was regarded as the "King of the Violin", and by Nathan Milstein as the "Tsar of the violin".
Mr. Parvulescu will perform unaccompanied,
He will be introduced in a public onstage conversation with Rene’ Mandel, Artistic Director of Berkeley Symphony, and also a frequent guest violinist with San Francisco Symphony.
The concert is the second in this year’s program of five chamber music concerts in Piedmont under the title Berkeley Symphony & Friends.
Tickets are $30 in advance and $35 at the door. Advance tickets are available online at berkeleysymphony.org, or by calling Berkeley Symphony at 841-2800, ext. 1.
Florin Parvulescu, Violin
Born in Bucharest, Romania, violinist Florin Parvulescu has been a member of San Francisco Symphony since 1998.Prior to that he was with the St. Louis Symphony.
As a soloist and chamber musician, Mr. Parvulescu has appeared in recital series at the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore, the Kennedy Center in Washington, D, the Icicle Creek Music Festival, Aspen Music Festival, Berkeley Symphony Chamber Music Series, Johanessen International School of the Arts in Victoria.British Columbia, the San Francisco Symphony Chamber Music Series, Chamber Music Series of St. Louis, and in Heidelberg, Germany and Fontainebleau, France and as soloist with the Xiamen Philharmonic in 2009 and 2010.
He has performed in chamber music concerts with pianists Kiril Gerstein and Anton Nel and performed Thomas Ades’s Piano Quintet with the composer accompanying on piano. He has taught master classes at the Beijing Conservatory and at the School for the Arts in Macau. He also has been featured on National Public Radio.
Mr. Parvulescu started playing the violin at the age of six at the Georges Enescu music school. In 1978, he attended the Juilliard School Pre-College division, studying with Shirley Givens. In 1989, he continued his studies at the Peabody Conservatory of Music at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where his principal teachers were Sylvia Rosenberg and Herbert Greenberg. He has also worked closely with pianist Leon Fleisher and Berl Senofsky.
In addition to earning Bachelor’s and Artist Diploma degrees at Peabody, he was awarded numerous prizes, among them the Marbury Award and Yale Gordon award.
An accomplished and in-demand conductor, he studied conducting with David Zinman at the Aspen Music Festival and Michael Tilson-Thomas. He has led the New World Symphony, the Aspen Academy Orchestra, the Icicle Creek Festival Orchestra, the Academy Orchestra of San Francisco.
In 2014 he appeared with the Nanning Symphony in China in a program featuring Wagner’s Die Meistersinger Overture, Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante and Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition.