Prizewinner in the Tchaikowsky and Brussels competitions, Charles Castleman has been soloist with the orchestras of Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, Hong Kong, Moscow, Mexico City, New York, San Francisco, Seoul, and Shanghai. When a boxed CD set including the 17 best prizewinning violin performances of the Brussels Concours' 50-year history was released, it featured a concerto performance from Charles Castleman.
Castleman's solo CDs include 10 Sarasate virtuoso cameos, 8 Hubay Hungarian Scenes and Ysaye's Solo Sonatas (made at the time of his unique performance at Tully Hall in NYC) on Music and Arts; Gershwin and Antheil on Musicmasters, and 20th-century violin and harpsichord music for Albany. As a Ford Foundation Concert Artist, Castleman commissioned the David Amram Concerto, performing its premiere with Leonard Slatkin and the St. Louis Symphony, and recording it for Newport Classic. Lares Hercii for Violin and Harpsichord was dedicated to him by Pulitzer Prize winner Christopher Rouse.
He has participated in such US festivals as Marlboro (VT), Grant Park (IL), Great Woods (MA), Newport (RI), Round Top (TX), Sarasota (FL), and Saratoga (NY), as well as AFCM (Australia), Budapest, Fuefukigawa (Japan), Montreux, Shanghai, Sheffield (Britain), and Vienna Festwoche. His recitals have been broadcast on NPR, BBC, in Berlin and Paris.
Castleman's longterm chamber music associations have included the New String Trio of NY (with BASF recordings of Reger and Frank Martin) and the Raphael Trio. With the Raphael he recorded Dvorak for Nonesuch and Sony, Mendelssohn for Discover, Beethoven for Unicorn, and Wolf-Ferrari for ASV, with premieres of Rainer Bischof's Trio 89 for the Vienna Festival, and Frederic Rzewski's Trio for the Kennedy Center.
An internationally renowned teacher, Castleman has conducted master classes in Hong Kong, London, Vienna, Salzburg, Shanghai, Seoul, Sydney, Tokyo, Kiev, Christchurch, Melbourne, Perth and Brisbane. His students have been winners at Brussels, Munich, Leventritt, Naumburg, and Szeryng, are in 30 professionally active chamber groups and are first desk players in 11 major orchestras. He is founder/director of the Quartet Program, now in its 36th season at Bucknell University, a 7-week workshop in solo and chamber performance. The Tokyo and Cleveland Quartets, Itzhak Perlman, and Yo-Yo Ma have donated master classes there, Ma praising it as "the best program of its time ... a training ground in lifemanship."
Castleman earned degrees from Harvard, Curtis, and the University of Pennsylvania. His teachers were Emmanuel Ondricek (teaching assistant of Sevcik; Ysaye student) and Ivan Galamian; his most influential coaches were Oistrakh and Szeryng. He plays a Stradivarius from 1708, and chooses from 80 bows.
Prior to joining the Eastman faculty in 1975, Castleman served at the Philadelphia Musical Academy (1967-76), SUNY Purchase (1972-1976), and IHEM in Montreux, Switzerland (1973-75).
