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 Mr. Neidich is a faculty member in the College for the following department(s) and division(s):
| Telephone | (212) 749-2802 x7761 |
| | | Charles Neidich mesmerizes audiences and critics the world over with performances which "surpass the limitations of the instrument." He is one of a rare breed of clarinetists who maintain a solo career, dividing his time among recitals, orchestra engagements, and chamber music concerts. He has recently also undertaken the role of conductor.
During the 2001–02 season, Charles Neidich performs at the Kennedy Center in a Joan Tower program, plays the Schubert Octet with the Brentano Quartet at the Weill Recital Hall of Carnegie Hall, and performs with the Pasadena Symphony. He will play the Corigliano concerto with the Jacksonville Symphony, Fabio Mechetti conducting; the Mozart Clarinet Concerto with the Century Players in San Francisco; Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time with the Peabody Trio in San Antonio; and the Bartok Contrasts and the Brahms A Minor Trio in Tucson with the Peabody Trio. He also plays recitals at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and in other cities in The Netherlands and the Nielsen Concerto with Matthias Bamert conducting in Leipzig. Additionally, he performs in Taiwan, Finland, and Monte Carlo.
Mr. Neidich's 2000–2001 season began with performances at the Orford Festival in Canada and in Finland at the Turku Music Festival. He also performed that season in France and in Germany at the Konzerthaus Berlin and with the Philharmonisches Staatsorchester in Halle. In China he played at the Beijing Music Festival. In the United States, Mr. Neidich appeared in recital and in chamber music concerts from coast to coast at venues in New York, San Francisco, Indianapolis, New Mexico, North Carolina, and Georgia, among others. Programs included works by Brahms, Mozart, Bach, Reich, Debussy, Zemlinsky, Poulenc, Villa-Lobos, Beethoven, Hindemith, and Copland. Mr. Neidich's performances of recent seasons were highlighted by his critically acclaimed performance of Mozart's Clarinet Concerto in A Major—for which he also received audience raves—at the London Proms with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Daniele Gatti conducting. Other engagements included the Mozart Clarinet Quintet and the Brahms Quintet (with the Juilliard String Quartet) in Washington, D.C., and Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time with the Peabody Trio in San Francisco, New York, and Indiana. He performed and conducted Mozart K. 622 and his own work for clarinet and strings, Scherzissimo, with the San Diego Symphony; the Brahms Clarinet Quintet with the Mendelssohn String Quartet in New York at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Copland's Clarinet Concerto with the Knoxville Symphony and McAllister's "X" Concerto with I Musici de Montreal.
Additional highlights of recent seasons include concerts with the Spokane Symphony Orchestra, the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra, the Minnesota Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Handel & Haydn Society of Boston, the St. Louis Symphony, the National Arts Orchestra in Ottawa, the Pittsburgh Chamber Music Society, and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. He played Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time in New York at the Frick Collection with the Peabody Trio, the Brahms Quintet with the Mendelssohn String Quartet at Harvard and the New York premiere of Elliott Carter's Clarinet Concerto with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. On a tour of Asia he performed the Françaix and Mozart Clarinet Concertos with the Yomiuri Orchestra of Tokyo. Mr. Neidich played the Brahms Clarinet Quintet at Columbia University's Miller Theater in New York and at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. with the Juilliard String Quartet. At the Wigmore Hall in London he appeared with the American String Quartet. He played the world premiere of Joan Tower's Clarinet Concerto with the American Symphony, toured extensively with recital programs in the former Soviet Union, and performed together with Heinz Holliger at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Mr. Neidich is also a frequent guest at many major international festivals.
In recent years, Charles Neidich has become deeply involved in authentic performance practice using period instruments. In May 1994, he performed the Mozart concerto in his reconstruction of the original version on a copy of a late eighteenth-century basset clarinet on tour in Europe with Tafelmusik, in a highly successful debut at the Barbican in London. He has also developed recital programs where he combines performance of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century music on period instruments with performance of contemporary music on modern instruments.
Charles Neidich's repertoire of well over 200 solo works includes pieces commissioned or inspired by him, as well as his own transcriptions. He has presented premieres of the twentieth century's leading composers such as William Schuman, Milton Babbitt, Ralph Shapey, Meyer Kupferman, Joan Tower, and Edison Denisov.
A native New Yorker of Russian and Greek descent, Charles Neidich began clarinet studies with his father and piano with his mother. He continued his clarinet studies with the famed pedagogue Leon Russianoff. Although quite active in music since childhood, Mr. Neidich decided against attending a music conservatory, but continued private lessons with Mr. Russianoff until graduating from Yale University with a bachelor of arts cum laude in anthropology. In 1975, he became the first American to receive a Fulbright grant to study in the former Soviet Union. He attended the Moscow Conservatory for three years, studying with Boris Dikov and Kirill Vinogradov.
A winner of several top European prizes, including the 1982 Munich International Competition sponsored by the ARD, Mr. Neidich also won the first major clarinet competition in the United States—the Walter W. Naumburg Competition (1985)—an award which catapulted him into prominence as a soloist.
In addition to performing, Charles Neidich has a high profile as a teacher and is a member of the artist faculties of The Juilliard School, Manhattan School of Music, and the State University of New York at Stony Brook. During the 1994–95 season he was a visiting Professor at the Sibelius Academy in Finland.
Mr. Neidich’s recordings are available from Sony Classical, Sony Vivarte, Deutsche Grammophon, and Bridge Records.
Manhattan School of Music faculty since 1989.
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