JAVS Fall 2024

All three works are a wonderful addition to the transposed viola library and would do well alongside the sonatas of Brahms and Franck. The arrangements by Gebrian are excellent—the transpositions to viola work well, and the interplay between viola and piano work in terms of range. Holt’s piano playing gives a wide range of colors and characters in dialogue with the viola, which often soars above the piano texture with ease. The two previously released an album together and their comfort and confidence as a chamber duo comes across effortlessly throughout the Trailblazers album.

TRAILBLAZERS: Sonatas by Henriëtte Bosmans, Ethel Smyth, and Dora Pejačević Acis Productions, February 6, 2024 Molly Gebrian, viola Danny Holt, piano https://www.acisproductions.com/trailblazers-gebrian-holt cello and piano. While many of us may be vaguely familiar with Ethel Smyth (famous for her opera, The Wreckers ), I had never heard of Henriëtte Bosmans or Dora Pejačević. The Bosmans Sonata in A Minor, written in 1919, has a robust romantic style with lovely contrasts in color and character interlaced within each movement. The Smyth, also a Sonata in A minor, was written in 1887 and is a great addition to the album, with strong Brahms influences in both the piano and viola. The Smyth is a unique current of melancholic wistfulness, however, with a rollicking Allegro of syncopations drawing the sonata to a close. Trailblazers features both arrangements and performance of sonatas by Molly Gebrian, all originally written for The last work by Pejačević is from 1913. It favors chromatic and bold harmonies more than the other sonatas on the album, but still within the flavor of robust Romanticism. The album ends with a triumphant major key finale from Pejačević, with a certain hopefulness and optimism lingering in the air behind it.

encircling Acis Productions, July 16, 2024 Daphne Gerling, viola Tomoko Kashiwagi, piano https://www.acisproductions.com/encircling-daphne gerling While encircling also features female composers and their viols compositions, it takes a different lens to the selection of works by organizing them around the Berkshire Composition Competition sponsored by music philanthropist Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge. While most of us are familiar with the story surrounding the 1919 competition—and the works by Ernest Bloch and Rebecca Clarke— encircling focuses on some of Clarke’s female contemporaries whose works are less standard.

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Journal of the American Viola Society / Vol. 40, No. 2, Fall 2024