OBITUARIES

IRENE SHARP

US cellist and pedagogue Irene Sharp died on 13 July at the age of 87. She taught on the faculties of the Mannes College of Music and the University of California at Berkeley, and her students included soloist Matt Haimovitz, Philadelphia Orchestra principal cello Hae-yi Ni and Amos Yang, associate principal of the San Francisco Symphony.

Born in 1936, Sharp studied with Margaret Rowell and attended masterclasses with Pablo Casals at Berkeley in 1960. In 1996 she founded California Summer Music, a three-week summer training programme for young musicians, which has been going for more than two decades. Sharp was its artistic director. She also served on the faculties of Meadowmount School for Strings, Bowdoin Summer Music Festival, and Indiana University’s String Academy. Sharp was an invited speaker at the national meetings of the Music Teachers’ National Association and the Music Educators’ National Conference, and gave numerous teacher-training workshops worldwide.

Sharp received an Outstanding Teacher award from the American String Teachers Association (ASTA) in 1992.

VICTOR PIKAYZEN

Ukrainian violinist Victor Pikayzen died on 8 July aged 90. His performing career spanned five continents, playing a range of repertoire including works dedicated to him by Aram Khachaturian and Boris Tchaikovsky. He was considered an expert interpreter of Ysaÿe, Bach and Paganini, having played the 24 Caprices in concert 78 times in his life.

Born in Kyiv in 1933, Pikayzen began playing the violin aged four. He went on to study at the Kyiv Conservatoire. During World War II he lived in Kazakhstan, eventually relocating to Moscow to study at the Gnessin State Musical College with violinist David Oistrakh. He continued his studies with Oistrakh at the Moscow

Conservatoire, graduating in 1957 and completing postgraduate studies in 1960. He became a soloist with the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra that year.

Pikayzen was a laureate of many competitions, including second prize at the Jan Kubelík Competition in 1949, fifth at the Queen Elisabeth Competition in 1955 and second at the International Tchaikovsky Competition in 1958.

He enjoyed a long career as a teacher following his competition successes. In 1966 he joined the faculty at the Moscow Conservatoire, where he remained until 1986, and returned in 2006. He also taught at the Moscow State Institute of Music and the Central Music School, as well as the Hacettepe University Ankara State Conservatory from 1993, and held guest professorships in Japan and Taiwan.

Pikayzen received the People’s Artist of the Russian Federation award, the Honoured Artist of the Russian Federation award and honorary doctorates from multiple international universities.

DAVID NEUBERT

American double bassist David Neubert died on 26 June at the age of 69. For 30 years he served as principal bass of the Austin Symphony, Ballet and Opera Orchestra in Texas, and professor of double bass at the University of Texas at Austin (UTA) from 1982 to 2011. He was also UTA’s director of instructional technology from 2011 until his retirement in 2014, and a pioneer in the field of online music teaching.

Born in 1954, Neubert earned a master’s degree in performance from the Eastman School of Music and a doctorate from UTA. He was an active participant with the International Society of Bassists (ISB), chairing two of its annual conventions: the first at UTA in 1986 and the second in 1993 at the Interlochen Arts Academy. In 2017 he also hosted ‘The Making of the ISB’ panel presentation at Ithaca College, to mark the society’s 50th anniversary. He also contributed to American String Teacher magazine. In his retirement, Neubert helped to launch a community arts centre in rural north central Kansas.

JACKIE HARTLEY

British violinist Jackie Hartley has died aged 63. Born in Ormskirk, she studied with Howard Davis of the Alberni Quartet and received a scholarship to study at the Royal Academy of Music (RAM) in London. There she studied violin and piano, and later harpsichord, and formed the Hartley Piano Trio. She graduated in 1982, becoming principal second violin of the London Philharmonic Orchestra in 1984.

Over the next decade, Hartley performed with numerous ensembles, including the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Academy of St Martin in the Fields Orchestra and Chamber Ensemble. She served as assistant leader of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and subleader of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, before going on to co-lead the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) in 1998, at the invitation of Simon Rattle. She remained in the post for seven years. Hartley also taught at many schools, including the RAM and Royal College of Music.

ANTON SIE

HARTLEY PHOTO PHILIP TAYLOR

The Hong Kongbased violin maker Anton Sie died in June 2023 aged 87. His life was chronicled by author Elizabeth Ostring in her 2017 biography Crafting a Symphony in Wood.

Born in 1935 in Kudus, Indonesia, Sie studied theoretical physics at Jilin University in China. After graduating he became a researcher at China’s North Eastern Institute of Physics, specialising in quantum physics and acoustic physics. His passion for violin making began when a 1/8-size violin he made for his seven-year-old daughter was noted to have excellent acoustic qualities when she played it in a music examination.

Sie moved to Hong Kong in 1977 where he taught violin, cello and guitar privately, but concentrated on violin making and repair work, particularly for the Hong Kong Philharmonic and visiting musicians.