Early Years and Studies
The youngest of five children from an Armenian father and English mother, he also claims Scottish ancestry through his maternal grandfather, a Sanderson, and the MacDonell of Glengarry clan. Oundjian was educated in England, where he began studying the violin at age seven with Manoug Parikian. He attended Charterhouse School in Godalming. He continued studies later with Béla Katona. He then attended the Royal College of Music.
Oundjian studied at the Juilliard School with Ivan Galamian, Itzhak Perlman, and Dorothy Delay. While at Juilliard, he minored in conducting, and later received encouragement his endeavors when he attended a master class from the eminent German conductor Herbert von Karajan.
In 1980, Oundjian won First Prize at the International Violin Competition in Viña del Mar, Chile. Oundjian became the first violinist of the Tokyo String Quartet and held the post for 14 years. A repetitive stress injury forced Oundjian to curtail his instrumental career. He then shifted his full-time musical focus to conducting.
Read more about this topic: Peter Oundjian
Famous quotes containing the words early, years and/or studies:
“I could be, I discovered, by turns stern, loving, wise, silly, youthful, aged, racial, universal, indulgent, strict, with a remarkably easy and often cunning detachment ... various ways that an adult, spurred by guilt, by annoyance, by condescension, by loneliness, deals with the prerogatives of power and love.”
—Gerald Early (20th century)
“Lonesome? God, no! From the day the kids are born, if it’s not one thing, it’s another. After all those years of being responsible for them, you finally get to the point where you want to scream: “Fall out of the nest already, you guys, will you? It’s time.””
—Anonymous Mother of Four. As quoted in Women of a Certain Age, by Lillian B. Rubin, ch. 2 (1979)
“His life itself passes deeper in nature than the studies of the naturalist penetrate; himself a subject for the naturalist. The latter raises the moss and bark gently with his knife in search of insects; the former lays open logs to their core with his axe, and moss and bark fly far and wide. He gets his living by barking trees. Such a man has some right to fish, and I love to see nature carried out in him.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)