American violinist
Mark Kaplan has consistently exhibited the technical and interpretive skills to rival those of almost any violinist of his generation, and he has played at the major concert halls across the globe and with many of the leading conductors, including
Tennstedt,
Ormandy, Maazel,
Dutoit,
Rattle,
Masur,
Salonen,
Slatkin, and
Zinman.
Kaplan's repertory is quite eclectic, too, ranging from Baroque to modern, and from the standards to the little known. That said, his discography contains a good portion of 20th century and contemporary works, with the names
Bartók,
Berg, and
Stravinsky prominent on the list, as well as contemporary composers
Luigi Nono,
Lewis Spratlan, and
Paul Chihara.
Kaplan has taught violin for many years, first at UCLA and then at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. He has also been a member of the chamber groups, the
Golub Kaplan Carr Trio and Sequenza.
Kaplan has recorded for several labels, including Albany, Bridge, Claves, Intercord, Koch International, and Arabesque Records. His recordings as a member of the
Golub Kaplan Carr Trio are also available on Arabesque Records.
Mark Kaplan was born in Boston on December 20, 1953. He studied violin at Juilliard with Dorothy DeLay.
Kaplan was given the Award of Special Distinction at the 1973 Leventritt Competition.
He launched his solo career in the U.S. that same year, but it was his 1975 concert in Cologne, when he replaced
Pinchas Zukerman, that propelled him to international notice. Thereafter,
Kaplan steadily built a successful career. In 1982 he branched out when, with pianist
David Golub and cellist
Colin Carr, he formed the
Golub Kaplan Carr Trio. The group drew lavish accolades and citations for its concerts and recordings, including the 1995 AFIM Indie award for its Arabesque recording of piano trios by
Smetana and
Tchaikovsky.
Kaplan also remained active in his solo career, regularly appearing at the major concert venues in Europe and the U.S. His 1989 Arabesque recording of
Paganini and Wieniawski concertos was highly praised, and he went on to make a string of recordings for Arabesque and other labels. After the death in 2000 of
David Golub,
Kaplan and
Carr formed a new trio in 2001 with pianist
Yael Weiss, renaming it Sequenza. In the new century
Kaplan has also remained active in his solo career and is still on the faculty at Indiana University. His later recordings include the 2009 Arabesque recording of Bartók: Works for Violin.