Cellist, pilot and teacher who received his Bachelor’s degree at USC in 1971 and went on to score a graduate fellowship at Berkeley. Upon graduation, he was quickly hired onto the faculty at Michigan State University, where he stayed from 1973 until 1977, then taught for eleven years at CSU-Northridge.
Around this time, he founded the L.A. Piano Quartet, which performed its inaugural concert in 1977 at the Los Angeles Music Center. He stayed with them for about three decades, premiering Steven Stucky’s “Piano Quartet for Violin, Viola, Cello and Piano” on 13th March 2005 at the Tucson Winter Chamber Music Festival, which he founded and for which he served as Artistic Director since its inception in March of 1994. A catalogue of festival performances are available on CD, beginning in its first season through 2007, and featuring music ranging from Johannes Brahms to Philip Glass.
No stranger to new music, he helped premiere Gerard Schurmann’s “The Gardens of Exile” and “Trio for Clarinet, Cello and Piano”, the former in Oberlin, Ohio, where he taught at the conservatory beginning in 1992. He also helped premiere Arthur Shepherd’s “Triptych for Soprano and String Quartet” on 23rd September 2006 and reprised it at the TWCM festival in 2007.
In the mid-2000s, he emigrated to Australia with his wife—Nicole Divall plays viola for the Australia Chamber Orchestra—and children Nikolas and Sofie. It was not long after that he was asked to join the Grainger Quartet, which grew out of the ashes of the the Australian String Quartet. Unfortunately, this collaboration was short-lived, as Peter retired with a nagging hand injury.
Fortunately, there are plenty of opportunities to hear him on CD, beginning with Frank Sinatra’s 1979 boxed set, Trilogy, and carrying on through to 2007’s Philip Glass: Theater Music Archive.
Other highlights from his recording career include the Miklos Rozsa’s “Concerto for Cello and Orchestra, Op. 32”, on the Silva Screen label, the aforementioned “Gardens” on Albany, Orchestral Suites Nos. 2 & 3 of Johann Sebastian Bach, with Pablo Casals and the Marlboro Festival Orchestra, Antonin Dvorak’s “String Quintet in G, Op. 77”, on CBS/Sony, Ramson Wilson’s Pleasure Songs for Flute, Twentieth Century Romantics, Beethoven Trios, and Bratsche!, a 1993 release of chamber works by Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, and Bridge.
Good news: The hand seems to be a little bit better. Peter is now listed as a cellist with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, and made an appearance at the Adelaide International Cello Festival in 2008.
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