Violinist. He was the longtime concertmaster of the Vienna State Opera and the Vienna Philharmonic, and the founder of the world famous Rosé Quartet. Conductor Sir Adrian Boult called him "Europe's greatest orchestral leader of his time". Rosé was born Arnold Josef Rosenblum in Jassy, Romania, and studied at the Vienna Conservatory (1873 to 1879). Well aware of anti-Semitism in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, he changed his name to Rosé soon after embarking on his professional career and later converted from Judaism to Protestantism. In 1881 he made his Vienna debut as soloist in Goldmark's Violin Concerto, and was immediately appointed first soloist and deputy concertmaster of the Philharmonic and Opera orchestras. He led the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra from 1888 to 1896 and rose to concertmaster in Vienna under the regime of Gustav Mahler, positions he would hold for the next 40 years. He married Mahler's sister Justine in 1902; their children Alfred and Alma became professional musicians. In the meantime he was gaining a stellar reputation as a chamber performer through his activities with the Rosé Quartet, which he founded in 1882 with his brother Eduard Rosé as cellist. They were initially associated with Brahms, giving the Vienna premieres of his G major Quintet (1890) and Clarinet Quintet (1892), and mastered the German Classical and Romantic repertories. Rosé himself represented the end of the 19th Century style of Viennese violin playing, with its sparing use of vibrato, but he was quite adventurous in tackling modern music. The Rosé Quartet premiered Arnold Schoenberg's controversial First and Second Quartets (1907, 1908), participated in the 1902 premiere of Schoenberg's sextet "Verklarte Nacht", and gave first performances of works by Pfitzner, Reger, and Korngold. They toured extensively and visited the United States in 1928. With the Nazi takeover of Austria in 1938 Rosé was unceremoniously relieved of his musical posts, and after the death of his wife later that year he and daughter Alma escaped to London. There he reformed his quartet, but financial difficulties led Alma to return to the continent for solo engagements - and an ultimately tragic fate in the Holocaust. The violinist marked his 80th birthday with a chamber recital at London's Wigmore Hall, accompanied by pianist Myra Hess. In 1946 Rosé received confirmation that Alma had perished in the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp two years earlier; the news broke his spirit and he died soon aftewards. He was cremated in London in 1946. His inurned remains were eventually returned to Vienna and interred in the Rosé family grave at Grinzing cemetery on 16-08-1956. The grave inscription also carries the names of his wife Justine and his daughter Alma. A handful of recordings Rosé made between 1900 and 1910 survive, as does his 1929 recording of the Bach Double Concerto in D minor with Alma.