For his second CD release, 25-year-old, New York-born violist David Aaron Carpenter is joined by Vladimir Ashkenazy who leads the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra. Together they perform the Symphony with Viola obbligato, “Harold in Italy”, which Hector Berlioz originally wrote on a commission from Paganini. The present recording features, for the first time, an unpublished, more virtuosic soloist part written for Paganini.

The coupling is a showpiece which Nicolò Paganini wrote after rejecting his earlier Berlioz commission: “The Sonata per la Gran Viola displays the highest virtuosic writing for this instrument”, says David Aaron Carpenter, who defines his mission as focusing attention on the viola as a great solo string instrument in its own right.

Recipient of the 2011 Leonard Bernstein Award and winner of the 2010 Avery Fisher Career Grant, David Aaron Carpenter has emerged as one of the world’s most promising young artists. In 2006, he won the prestigious Walter E Naumburg Viola Competition and, in 2007, he became protégé for The Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative, being the youngest in this mentorship programme’s history. David Aaron Carpenter has been the protégé of several major international musical figures, such as Pinchas Zukerman, Yuri Bashmet and Christoph Eschenbach.