Word: viola
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Last evening's program by a fine violist, Paul Doktor, and a muddy pianist, Yaltah Menuhin (fille), offered Brahma, Debussy, and Kabalevsky, all for the price of Hindemith. Hindemith's Sonata No. 1 for viola (1920) is what is known in scholarly circles as a review of the literature. It starts with annotated Schubert and proceeds to Brahms, citing from impressionistic Debussy as needed. An extensive quote of the born motive in Brahms' Fourth Symphony provides the theme for a set of variations, wherein Hindemith invokes the style of Kabalevsky's 24 Easy Pieces for Children; and paraphrases...
Happily less pretentious, and much more satisfying, Walter Piston's Interlude came when just that was needed. Not startling, not astounding, not even particularly original; but pleasant to hear, the screne little piece luxuriates in the tone of the viola. Doktor's relaxed sounds flowed, and well...
...pieces, the first and the last, saved the program. One of them, Schubert's Sonata Per Arpeggione (1824), actually transcribes for viola a work for an extinct instrument. A Viennese violin maker invented the six-stringed arpeggione in 1823 and for some reason Schubert wrote a masterpiece for it. Transcribed, the sonata is one of the mainstays of the viola repertoire. And Doktor, though he chose a questionable tempo to begin with, modulated it with good, sensitive rubatos where needed. Perhaps because he was just not warmed up, some of the technical display in the later movements came out more...
...starter, Mozart's Duo for Violin and Viola in G (K. 423) makes nearly equal demands on violinist and violist, and regrettably the two performers were not equally up to them. Roy Sonne, violin, delivered a strong, clear line, which became tiresome only when it remained a strong, clear line throughout most of the three movements. But by playing double stops out of tune, occasionally missing entrances that should have been carefully timed, and rushing sustained notes, Joan Renne (violist) vitiated much of Sonne's power...
Dresden-born and the son of a viola player, Ronnefeld toured Germany in his teens as a concert pianist. Now chief conductor at the Bonn Stadttheater, he has written a handful of other compositions, but The Ant is both his first full-scale opera and his first work to attract wide attention. The boos it also attracts seem to Composer Ronnefeld merely "stupid." To people who read it correctly, he insists, his ant opera "introduces a higher reality...