Arnold Steinhardt

Born in Los Angeles, Arnold Steinhardt, received his early training from Carl Moldrem and then with two Leopold Auer students, Peter Meremblum and Toscha Seidel.  At age fourteen he made his solo debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra.  He continued his studies with Ivan Galamian at the Curtis Institute of Music and under the sponsorship of Georg Szell with Joseph Szigeti in Switzerland.

Winner of the Philadelphia Youth Competition in 1957, the 1958 Leventritt Award, and Bronze Medalist in the Queen Elizabeth International Violin Competition in 1963, Steinhardt has appeared throughout America and Europe as a recitalist and soloist with various orchestras including the New York Philharmonic and the Cleveland Orchestra.

Arnold Steinhardt has been the first violinist of the internationally acclaimed Guarneri String Quartet for its entire forty-five year career, 1964-2009.  He has recorded extensively for RCA Victor, Philips, Arabesque, Sheffield Lab, and Biddulph among others.  His most recent releases are a reissue of unaccompanied Bach works on the Town Hall label, the complete works for violin and piano by Franz Schubert with Seymour Lipkin, piano, on Newport Classic, and An American Journey for Naxos presenting rarely heard American works and three premiers on record by composers Dave Grusin, Lincoln Mayorga, and Victor Steinhardt.

Arnold Steinhardt has been a Professor of Violin at the University of Maryland, Rutgers University, the Colburn School, Bard College, and presently the Curtis Institute of Music.  He has received Honorary Doctorates from the University of South Florida, Harpur College, and the Colburn School.

Since 1993, Steinhardt has been actively involved with Opus 118 Harlem School of Music that has been the subject of both the documentary, Small Wonders, and the feature length film, Music of the Heart, starring Meryl Streep.

Author of numerous articles that have appeared in Chamber Music America, Musical America, Keynote, and Strings, Arnold Steinhardt’s first book “Indivisible By Four, a String Quartet in Pursuit of Harmony,” published by Farrar Straus & Giroux appeared in 1998.  His latest book, “Violin Dreams,” published by Houghton Mifflin, which includes two recordings he has made forty years apart of Bach’s D Minor Partita for unaccompanied violin, was released in 2006.

Steinhardt writes a monthly blog about music, “In the Key of Strawberry”.