The violinist Irvine Arditti was born in London in 1953. He studied at the Royal Academy of Music, started playing in the London Symphony Orchestra in 1976 and two years later, at the age of 25, became its concertmaster. In 1980, he left the orchestra in order to concentrate on the Arditti Quartet, which he had formed while still at school. Apart from his legendary career as first violinist of this quartet, Irvine Arditti has baptized a great number of solo works. He has presented the world premieres of many compositions written especially for him, including Iannis Xenakis’s Dox Orkh, Toshio Hosokawa’s Landscape III, both for violin and orchestra, as well as Brian Ferneyhough’s Terrain for violin and ensemble. The violinist has performed with leading orchestras such as the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, the Orchestre National de Paris, the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, the London Sinfonietta, the Nieuw Ensemble and Oslo Sinfonietta. Many composers, in particular Ligeti and Dutilleux, have praised Arditti for his performances of their concerts. Besides the more than 190 CDs that Irvine Arditti has recorded with the Arditti Quartet, the violinist also has made many recordings on his own. His recording of solo works by composers such as Carter, Estrada, Ferneyhough and Donatoni has won numerous prizes, as has his registration of Nono’s La lontananza nostalgica utopica futura. Arditti’s CD of John Cage’s Freeman Etudes was received with the highest praise imaginable. July 2013 saw the publication of the book The Techniques of Violin Playing, written by Arditti and the composer Robert Platz.