In Tuesday’s (4/10) Philadelphia Inquirer, Peter Dobrin writes, “William de Pasquale, 78, whose regal visage held a magnetic, four-decade presence at the front of the Philadelphia Orchestra’s first violin section and who was a member of a remarkable family of string players, died Sunday at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital of complications relating to prostate cancer. Though Mr. de Pasquale slipped into various titles with the orchestra—associate concertmaster, acting concertmaster, second concertmaster, and co-concertmaster—the job for him always amounted to being Mr. Dependable. He made easy work of tricky, exposed solos in Scheherazade and Strauss’ Four Last Songs. He played chamber music with Yo-Yo Ma, and brought his ‘compellingly ardent temperament’ to the Walton Violin Concerto. As the orchestra’s ambassador on tour, he led master classes with a gentle air of authority while playing examples on his modern Italian instrument. And sitting first desk, he was the person to whom Elmar Oliveira turned when the soloist, breaking a string mid-concerto, needed both a temporary fiddle and someone to restring his, lickety-split. … He was a frequent soloist himself, standing in front of the ensemble in Bartók’s Second Violin Concerto, the Chausson Poème, Elgar’s Violin Concerto in B Minor, the Korngold Concerto, and The Four Seasons of Vivaldi.”
Posted April 10, 2012
