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George Sopkin was a pupil of Emmanuel Feuermann in Europe and New York.
Although he began his career as one of the youngest members of the
Chicago Symphony he has devoted most of his life to Chamber Music. He
left the Symphony to join the Pro Arte Quartet and after World War II
became a founding member of the Fine Arts Quartet.
Later the Quartet became Artists-in-Residence at the Cleveland Institute
of Music and Northwestern University.
In 1964 they were appointed Professors of Music at the University of
Wisconsin-Milwaukee where they combined a heavy teaching schedule with
extensive tours: annually in Europe, State Department tours of the Far
East, numerous festivals (Tanglewood, Edinburgh, Ravinia) and, of
course, just about everywhere in the United States. In 1967 their Far
Eastern tour included three weeks in Japan where they gave concerts
and master classes in many cities: Tokyo, Osaka, Sapporo and others.
They have recorded for Vox, Everest, Concertapes, Decca, and Columbia most
of the major works for string quartet including the complete Beethoven
and Bartok String Quartets, the Mozrat King of Prussia Quartets, all the
Mozart String Quintets, more than forty Haydn Quartets and works by many
of their contemporaries including commissions from Milton Babbitt,
Seymour Shifrin, and Karel Husa, whose work won the Pulitzer Prize. Mr.
Sopkin has recorded solo repertoire by Ernest Bloch and John Downey, and
solo works written for him by Werner Torkanowsky.
In 1979 Mr. Sopkin resigned from the Fine Arts Quartet and the University
(where he holds the title of Distiguished Professor Emeritus) in order to
move to Maine and explore another chamber music repertoire. The New
England Piano Quartette is the fullfillment of this desire.
In January 1985, Mr. Sopkin was appointed Visiting Artist at
Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh to teach cello and chamber music
and to perform with the Carnegie-Mellon Trio. 1984 to 1992 also saw a
series of master classes at Albuquerque, New Mexico; the Interlochen
School of the Arts; Carnegie-Mellon University, England (Pro Corda),
Italy, Corfu, and the Banff Festival of the Artes, and Portland, Maine,
as well as recitals and four performances of the Hindemith Cello
Concerto. He now makes his home in Surry, Maine.
Since 1995 Mr. Sopkin has been on the staff of the Kneisel Hall School of
Chamber Music, and is also the director of the Amateur Chamber Music
Institute. In Europe, he has been teaching at the Orlando Festival in
Holland, giving master classes and coaching in London, Prague, and many
other cities. In December 1997, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
awarded him an Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts.
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