Violin virtuoso Emanuel Borok, former concertmaster of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, has distinguished himself as a soloist, orchestral leader and chamber musician.
Prior to his 25-year tenure as the Dallas Symphony’s concertmaster Emanuel Borok served as Associate Concertmaster of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and as Concertmaster of the Boston Pops Orchestra for eleven seasons.
Mr. Borok received his early musical instruction at the renowned Darzinya Music School in Riga, Latvia, and the Gnessin School of Music in Moscow. In 1964, he won the foremost National Violin Competition in the former Soviet Union and was selected for the position of Co-Concertmaster in the Moscow Philharmonic in 1971.
Emanuel Borok has made solo appearances in Canada, France, Holland, Italy, Israel, Mexico, Norway, Switzerland, Venezuela, and throughout the United States, including Carnegie Hall. His guest artist appearances have included the Bach Double Concerto with Yehudi Menuhin, Brahms’s Double Concerto with Janos Starker, Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante with Pinchas Zukerman and a concerto appearance in Cortona, Italy at the famed Tuscan Sun Festival.
His chamber music partners include Emanuel Ax, Joshua Bell, Yefim Bronfman, Lynn Harrell, Christopher Hogwood, Ralph Kirshbaum, Cho-Liang Lin, Paul Neubauer and Itzhak Perlman, among others.
Emanuel Borok was featured in the Distinguished Artists Recital Series at the 92nd Street Y in New York.
In 1999, he was featured in a recording by Voices of Change, Dallas’ new music chamber ensemble, called “Voces Americanas.” The album was nominated for the Grammy Award.
Mr. Borok’s recordings include the violin solo of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons with musicians from the Boston Symphony (Stereo Review Magazine named it “Best of the Month”), the Shostakovich Violin Sonata with Tatiana Yanpolsky (earned a four-star rating from the Penguin Cassette Guide), and Beethoven’s Archduke Trio with Claude Frank, piano, and Leslie Parnas, cello, (honored by “Ovation” magazine).
“A Road Less Traveled,” Mr. Borok’s most recent recording, was released to critical acclaim on the Eroica label; this performance includes seldom-performed concertos by Joseph Haydn.
Mr. Borok’s original cadenzas for all five Mozart Violin Concertos are available through the publisher, Theodore Presser Co.
Emanuel Borok has also established himself as an internationally- recognized teacher having taught at the Academia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, Italy; the Menuhin Festival in Gstaad, Switzerland; the Royal Conservatory and Academy of Music in London, the Conservatoire de Paris, the Tchaikovsky Conservatory of Moscow, the Academy of Music in Prague and the Tanglewood Music Center in Massacheusetts. He was invited to teach at the famous Verbier Festival in Switzerland the summer of 2005.
In addition to his duties with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Emanuel Borok currently serves on the prestigious music faculty of the Meadows School of the Arts at SMU.