Judith Aller
Judith Aller is an American-born violin virtuoso, a product of the vanishing romantic-expressionist tradition. Guided by her father, the late Victor Aller, a piano virtuoso and a Capitol recording artist, and her teacher, Jascha Heifetz, the nonpareil violinist of the 20th Century, she has become, and remains, a completely individual artist. There is no other like her on the scene today.
For years, during the ‘70’s, she maintained a successful solo career in Scandinavia and throughout Europe generally, operating from a base in Finland. She has received recognition both there in Europe and here in America and has an established audience for her work.
Aller comes from a family with a musical heritage that goes back many generations in Europe. She grew up in the midst of Hollywood's classical music golden era. Her father, pianist Victor Aller, best known for his chamber recordings with the Hollywood String Quartet, served as musical supervisor at Warner Brothers Studio. Ms. Aller started taking lessons on the violin at seven, and as a teenager, she began her studies with Jascha Heifetz in his master class at the University of Southern California. After three years with Heifetz, and an impressive debut tour, Aller married a Finnish musician, Ilkka Talvi, and relocated to Finland, residing first in Helsinki and subsequently in Pori. She toured Europe in recital and with the Pori Symphony Orchestra, in which she performed as soloist and served as concertmaster and assistant conductor. From Helsinki she toured as soloist with the Finnish Radio Symphony, made many recordings for Finnish radio, and taught at the Sibelius Academy. During this period, a Finnish critic wrote: "The soloist’s violin sang in a manner that could be characterized as an agreement of delicate senses, bringing to the audience a presence of something noble."
The fatal illness of her father brought Aller and her family back to America. In Los Angeles she performed as a principal and frequent soloist with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and the Oregon Bach Festival Orchestra, and played literally on hundreds of sound tracks for motion pictures, television productions, and popular music recordings. In her conducting debut with the Los Angeles Accademia Filarmonica, a Los Angeles critic wrote that "Aller's results were so illuminating particularly in Mozart's 29th symphony that one caught a glimpse of the days before World War II, when such conductors as Furtwangler and Stokowski ruled the musical firmament."
After remarrying, she moved to Paris with her husband, Bruce Cook, a novelist known on both continents (whose pen name was Bruce Alexander). While dividing her time between Paris and Los Angeles, Aller recorded "ARCHANGEL!" (on the USA Music Group label), a selection of the Opus 5 violin sonatas by the great Italian Baroque master, Arcangelo Corelli. These sonatas, which she describes as "music that exists outside of time," were recorded in a single day, and are among the finest recorded renditions of these virtuoso pieces. Following that recording, Aller returned to England, and soloed on a soundtrack for a film, titled "Maestro," about a violinist. She continued to perform recitals in France with pianists from the Paris Conservatory, and in Los Angeles with the Aller Quartet.