Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Viola

Viola Power on The Classical Network Today!

“Vioooooooooooola!”

Once heard, the plaintive cries of Sergiu Celibidache are not easily forgotten.

No doubt Celi would find solace, if only he could tune in for today’s Noontime Concert on The Classical Network, as Kristina Giles will perform selections from the 41 Caprices, Op. 22, by “the Paganini of the Viola,” Bartolomeo Campagnoli (1751-1827).

The program is another presented by Gotham Early Music Scene, or GEMS. GEMS is a non-profit organization that supports and promotes artists and organizations in New York City generally devoted to Early Music.

Giles’ recital was recorded at St. Bartholomew’s Church, 325 Park Avenue. Free concerts are held at St. Bart’s during the regular season on Thursdays at 1:15 p.m. For more information and a complete schedule of GEMS events, look online at gemsny.org.

It’s long been my ambition to do a viola show, so stick around following today’s concert broadcast for an afternoon of works written for this much-derided instrument that, as stated in Giles’ program notes, is “usually lost in the middle harmonies of orchestral and chamber music.”

We’ll hear concertos, chamber music, and more by Margaret Brouwer, Paul Hindemith, Joseph Joachim, Peter Lieberson, Bohuslav Martinu, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Georg Philipp Telemann, and Ralph Vaughan Williams.

Of course, in my ideal world, between selections I would love to share your viola jokes. But even if I don’t (and I probably won’t), please feel free to leave them in the comments section below.

You’ll find abundant prototypes at Viola Central:

https://violacentral.com/best-viola-jokes/

BONUS! Bill McGlaughlin will share selections from “Harold in Italy” – composed at the request of Niccolò Paganini, who wanted to show off his new viola – as part of his week-long survey of the works of Hector Berlioz on “Exploring Music,” tonight at 7.

In the meantime, we’ll give the viola some love, from 12 to 4 p.m. EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

July 9, 2019
Celibidache Bruckner Viola Fever?

Celibidache has a fever, and the only prescription is more viola!

We’ll have one of Celi’s divisive Bruckner performances this afternoon. Is it visionary, transcendent… or just painfully self-indulgent? If you’re up for a Brucknerian challenge, tune in, beginning around 2:25 EDT, to WWFM – The Classical Network or wwfm.org.

VIOLA!

March 26, 2019
Shostakovich’s Lost Impromptu Rediscovered

A lost impromptu by Dmitri Shostakovich was recently rediscovered in Moscow’s Central State Archive, among the papers of Vadim Borisovsky.

Borisovsky was violist in the Beethoven Quartet. The quartet, made up of graduates of the Moscow Conservatory, was founded in the mid-‘20s and played together for half a century. The ensemble gave first performances of thirteen of Shostakovich’s fifteen string quartets (Nos. 2 through 14). The third and fifth quartets were dedicated to the group, and Nos.11 through 14 to its individual members (No. 13 to Borisovsky himself). Shostakovich joined the quartet, at the keyboard, for the first performance of his Piano Quintet. He also played with quartet members at the premiere of his Piano Trio No. 2. Borisovsky died in 1972. He taught at the conservatory since the 1920s.

The impromptu – formally titled Impromptu, op. 33 – is a beautiful little piece. It is believed to have been written in one sitting in 1931. It is only the second known work written by Shostakovich to highlight the viola. The other is the Viola Sonata, Op. 147, of 1975, which has become a viola standard.

The discovery was announced on September 25, the composer’s birthday, but to my knowledge this is the first time a performance has been posted online. Listen to the “new” impromptu here, played by Paul Neubauer and Wu Han:

https://www.thestrad.com/artists/newly-discovered-viola-impromptu-by-shostakovich-performed-by-paul-neubauer/8038.article

PHOTO: Shostakovich (second from left) with the Beethoven Quartet. Borisovsky is on the far right.

July 28, 2018
Viola Love from Marlboro Music Festival

The viola gets some love on this week’s “Music from Marlboro.” We’ll hear two very different quintets, composed over a century apart, that yet reveal their creators’ shared affinity for the instrument’s dark, rich timbre.

Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “Phantasy Quintet,” written in 1912, was one of numerous works commissioned from England’s great composers by one Walter Wilson Cobbett, a businessman and amateur musician whose dual passions were chamber music and music of the Elizabethan era. (“Phantasy” was Cobbett’s preferred spelling.) The work is full of Tudor inflections and stamped by Vaughan Williams’ tell-tale love of folk music. Vaughan Williams doubles his violas, and the instrument is heard to great effect throughout the piece. We’ll hear a performance from the 1975 Marlboro Music Festival, with James Buswell and Sachiko Nakajima, violins; Philipp Naegele and Caroline Levine, viola; and Anne Martindale, cello.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, too, adds a second viola to his String Quintet No. 5 in D Major, K. 593. Composed in 1790, the work was recollected by the composer’s widow, Costanze, to have been written for another musical amateur, speculated to be Johann Trost. Trost must have been quite the gifted dilettante. He also knew Haydn from Esterhaza, and Haydn dedicated some of his quartets to him. When Haydn and Mozart played through the D Major Quintet together before Haydn’s first visit to London, the two men took turns indulging in the first viola part.

The work was known for centuries as the “Zigzag” because of an alteration to the original manuscript that modified what had been a descending chromatic figure in the final movement into something decidedly more humorous. We’ll hear a performance from Marlboro in 2005, with Sarah Kapustin and Diana Cohen, violins; Mark Holloway and Sebastian Krunnies, viola; and David Soyer, cello.

The two quintets will be divided by an evocative “Elegiac Trio” by Sir Arnold Bax, composed in 1916. The work, scored for flute, viola, and harp, appeared the year after Debussy’s trio for the same instrumental combination (which Bax may or may not have known). Its alluring melancholy emerged from a world at war. Bax was especially affected by escalating tensions between England and his beloved Ireland, which had just boiled over into violence with the Easter Rising. We’ll hear a performance of the trio from 1978, with Carol Wincenc, flute; Caroline Levine, viola; and Moya Wright, harp.

Leave your viola jokes in the comments section, if you must; then join me for more exceptional music-making from the archives of the Marlboro Music Festival, this Wednesday evening at 6 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

Marlboro School of Music and Festival: Official Page

October 11, 2017

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