Biography
Violist Ivo-Jan van der Werff has garnered a global reputation as a chamber player, recitalist, guest artist, and teacher. From 1983 to its last concert in Vienna in 2014, he was a member of the Medici String Quartet, performing in well over 2000 concerts in more than 50 countries, broadcasting regularly on radio and television. The Medici Quartet recorded over 100 works for EMI, Nimbus, Koch, and Hyperion, ranging from Haydn, Mozart, Britten, Janáček, Schubert, and the complete Beethoven cycle to more eclectic works of Saint-Saëns, Wajahat Khan, and Nigel Osborne. The quartet had collaborations with many artists across the musical, literary, and theatrical spectrum, including the Royal Shakespeare Company, George Martin, Alan Bennett, John Williams, Mitsuko Uchida, Jack Brymer, Dudley Moore, and Sir Clifford Curzon, amongst others.
Mr. van der Werff has performed as a recitalist in New York, New Zealand, Portugal, and Hong Kong, as well as numerous venues throughout the United Kingdom. His recordings for ASV and Koch include the Sonata Op. 107 by Max Reger and the complete works for viola and piano/harp by Arnold Bax. His most recent recording is of works by Al-Zand, Shostakovich, and Britten, released on the Guild label.
Mr. van der Werff is often invited to collaborate with chamber ensembles throughout Europe, the USA, and the Antipodes, such as the Montrose Trio, New Zealand, Alberni, Coull and Bridge String Quartets, Redcliffe and Adderbury Ensembles, and the Trio con Brio of Copenhagen. He has also collaborated with world-renowned musicians such as Lynn Harrell, Cho-Liang Lin, John Kimura Parker, Kyung Sun Lee, and Daniel Hope, and with members of the Tokyo, Emerson, and Juilliard quartets.
As a soloist, Mr. van der Werff has performed the Walton Concerto, Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante (with the Philharmonia Orchestra) and Vaughan Williams’ ‘Flos Campi’ and has been invited to appear as guest principal viola with many of the UK’s leading orchestras. For many years, Mr. van der Werff was a professor of viola and chamber music at the Royal College of Music in London and, since 2007, has been a full-time professor of viola at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University in Houston, Texas. He has developed a private viola program near London and is director of the Summer Viola Retreat held in either Upstate New York or in the Lake District in the UK. He has taught at many summer schools and festivals, such as Dartington and Oxford in the UK, Schlern in the Italian Alps, in Sweden, the Texas Music Festival, California Summer Music, Domaine Forget, Bowdoin, and Madeleine Island in the USA.
Mr. van der Werff has given masterclasses all over the world at schools such as Eastman, Colburn, San Francisco Conservatory, Vanderbilt, and Santa Barbara in the USA, Trinity College, Royal Northern College, Royal Scottish Academy, and the Royal College in the UK, the Royal Academy in Stockholm, the Hong Kong Academy for the Performing Arts as well as in Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Croatia, and Portugal, amongst others.
Many of his former students hold principal and regular positions in orchestras such as the BBC Symphony, Philharmonia Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic, English Chamber and English National Ballet in the UK, Dallas, New York Philharmonic, Minnesota, Pittsburgh, Houston Symphony, Houston Grand Opera and Ballet in the US as well as orchestras in Spain, Portugal, Norway, Sweden, New Zealand, Mexico, Germany, Netherlands, and France.
For many years, he also played in London studios on literally hundreds of soundtracks for film, pop, and TV, ranging from Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and James Bond, to Madonna and Mariah Carey, to Pride and Prejudice and Doctor Who.
Mr. van der Werff studied at the Royal College of Music with Margaret Major (Aeolian Quartet), where he won the major viola and chamber music prizes, also having private lessons with Peter Shidlof (Amadeus Quartet) before studying in Germany with Bruno Giuranna (Italian String Trio).
Inspired by his viola mentors, Ivo-Jan van der Werff has written A Notebook for Viola Players, published by Oxford University Press, which consists of a series of exercises and explanations on and about viola technique.