Hyman Bress (b. South Aftica, 1931, d. Montreal, Canada,1995) was a violinist who played first violin for the Montreal String Quartet from 1955-1963. He also recorded pieces that were rarely played by others. In this connection, he revived, and sometimes recorded relatively obscure works, such as the Joseph Joachim and Ernest Bloch Violin Concertos, and Alois Haba's microtonal piece,Fantasie for Violin (Op. 9A). He recorded the latter, and many other pieces, for the series The Violin: Volumes 1-5; Folkways Records. Bress played violin for all five volumes, which stretch from early Baroque to the Serialists of the 20th century, and even include one of his own electroacoustic pieces, Fantasy for Violin, Piano and Electric Tape, written in 1962 (The Violin: Vol. 5; Folkways). On that series of recordings, Bress played Bach, Mozart, Bheetoven, Schubert, Brahms, Schoenberg, Bartok, Bloch, Joachim, and Haba among many others. He gave recitals in major cities around the world, and appeared with leading orchestras such as The London Symphony Orchestra and the Berlin Philharmonic. Bress became inactive during the 1980s due to mental illness. He died in Montreal in 1995.

Describing Bress' playing, The London Times wrote in March 1961: 'Bress's phrasing was always significantly and expressively shaped, and to the exacting 20th-century works he brought a wide range of tone colour and dynamics. His tone - mellow and rich in its lower register and silky up at the top - in Mozart's Adagio, for instance, was beautiful in its cantabile line.' Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.