Endre Granat is a Hungarian violinist, music editor, and teacher born (in
Miskolc, Hungary – about 100 miles northeast of Budapest) on August 3,
1937. He is best known for having
recorded prolifically in Los Angeles as a studio (session) musician, (as did
Louis Kaufman, Toscha Seidel, and Israel Baker before him), where he almost always
served as concertmaster. He has played
and recorded for hundreds of movie soundtracks, CDs, and Television shows. Granat is easily the most experienced studio
violinist working today. He may also be
the only concert violinist in history whose wife was a murder victim (1975). His first teacher was his father (Josef
Granat) who was the concertmaster of the Budapest Philharmonic for many years. He then studied with Gyorgy Garay at the
Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest in his native country. I don’t know at what age he entered the
Academy. He fled the country during the
revolution in 1956. He was 19 years
old. He then spent five years living in
Switzerland although his initial plans were to go to Paris, France. Between 1956 and 1964 he was concertmaster or
a section violinist with the Hamburg Symphony, the Orchestra of the Suisse
Romande, and the Gothenburg Symphony. He
also graduated from the conservatory in Basel with a Master’s degree during
that time. In 1962 he entered and won a
violin competition at Heidelberg, Germany.
He was 25 years old. He came to
the U.S. in 1964 and studied further with Josef Gingold at Indiana University’s
Jacobs School of Music. Granat was
assistant concertmaster with the Cleveland Orchestra from 1964 to 1966. In 1967 he participated in the Queen Elizabeth
violin competition and came in lower than fifth place – I don’t know how much
lower. He was 30 years old. He then studied for five years with Jascha
Heifetz in Los Angeles. Between 1975 and
1977, he played very little, spending two years in South Korea studying
God-knows-what. I did not take the
trouble to find out; however, he and pianist Edith Kilbuck did record the complete
works for violin and harpsichord by J.S. Bach in 1976. When he returned from Korea, he began playing
in the studios in Los Angeles where he has been working ever since. Granat has taught at various music schools during
different times in his career, including the Royal Academy of Music in
Gothenburg (Sweden), Seoul National University, the Cleveland Institute of
Music, and USC in Los Angeles, where he might still be teaching. He has also frequently participated in
several music festivals in the U.S. and abroad and intermittently concertized as
a soloist working with some of the world’s conducting luminaries, including George
Szell, Zubin Mehta, and Georg Solti. He
was concertmaster of the Pacific Symphony in California from September 1983 to
June 1993. With regard to that
experience, Granat has said: “It's one thing to have a great number of
wonderful players; it's another thing to have a great orchestra. Eighty extraordinary musicians do not equal an
extraordinary orchestra. That takes
years.” Granat plays a 1721 Domenicus
Montagnana violin which he acquired in 1968.
He may have sold that violin in 2005.
