2024 Primrose International Viola Competition & American Viola Society Festival Program Book

2024 Primrose International Viola Competition & American Viola Society Festival Schedule of Events — FRIDAY, JUNE 21, 2024

Viola Quartet (2007)

Eric Wubbels (b.1980)

Carrie Frey, Anna Griffis, Sam Kelder & Martine Thomas

Eric Wubbels’ Viola Quartet displays the composer’s signature blend of rhythmic vitality, intense physical energy, dense harmonic material, and experimentalism. A virtuosic performer himself, Wubbels expertly exploits the viola quadrupling in athletic unison passages and thorny counterpoint hockets from which melodies sharply emerge and sonorities scintillate. The non-hierarchical structure stretches each violist to the limits of their instrument and a full range of expression, four equal soloists interweaving for a feat of endurance and beauty. This viola quartet makes an argument for the four-viola group as equal to any string quartet in expressivity, virtuosity, and technique and pushes the limits of the viola as a rival to the violin and cello in feats of skill. Underperformed due to its intensity and difficulty, this quartet is unique in its marriage of minimalistic repetition with an attention to timbre and harmony.

…under this blue of my land

Daniel Sabzghabei 2022 Gardner Competition Winner

Anthony Devroye, viola Wendy Richman, voice

“…under this blue of my land,” for viola and voice reflects on a text by an anonymous Persian woman from a prominent women’s rights movement in Iran. The unnamed woman speaks of the expansive and deep Persian sky which gives a sense of fleeting freedom within a regime which actively works to choke the voice in her throat and blot out the sun from her head. After an expansive meditation from the viola, the two join for a final, joint outpouring—freedom calls out like the sky.

4:45 pm – 6:15 pm

Masterclass: PIVC Juror Cathy Basrak Olive 270

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