JAVS Fall 2011

F ROM THE E DITOR

Ngwenyama. The competition intro duced a series of new features includ ing an innovative scoring method and live hD streaming over the Internet. And for those of us glued to our computers watching the events, the future of the viola looked very bright, with a string of highly talented vio lists performing. Lastly, in the spring we were saddened by the loss of a member of the JAVS family, Eric Chapman, who was the editor and author for our Modern Makers department; he supplied his final article only two weeks before he passed away. A dedicated friend of the viola, Eric greatly enhanced many viola congresses with his coordination of instrument displays. you can read about Eric’s life and his contributions to the viola in Mark Furth’s wonderful tribute in our In Memoriam section.

violists lament this situation and would welcome original solo works by Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, or Schubert, the limited repertoire has also freed violists to find means of rectifying the situation. Some do it by championing new music, like Molly (whose project you can read about in Alternative Styles) or Brett Deubner, who is featured in our Fresh Faces department. Some freely transcribe works, and many transcriptions have become sta ples of the repertoire. In this issue, Matthew Jones looks at a transcrip tion that has recently been gaining much interest: Borisovsky’s excerpts from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet . Some violists eagerly search for hid den treasures—often, but not always, by less well-known composers. Linda Shaver-Gleason looks at a neglected work by the very well-known Felix Mendelssohn: his Viola Sonata, which remained unpublished until 1966. Linda’s article also examines Mendelssohn’s equally neglected activities as a violist. Viola Archive (PIVA). In our AVS Retrospective department, Myrna Layton chats with several current and former student workers whose lives and careers have been greatly enhanced by the wealth of materials in the archive. In other AVS news, the 2011 Primrose International Viola Competition was a great success under the capable hands of the AVS’s new President, Nokuthula One great source of hidden viola treasures is the Primrose International

I attended a rather unconventional concert this past March: a recital for viola and piano/percussion (that is, one performer playing piano and per cussion simultaneously). I was a bit surprised that the performers, violist Molly Gebrian and pianist/percus sionist Danny holt, were able to get so many composers to write for this unusual combination, silently pon dering whether the works would ever be performed again. Molly’s doctoral advisor raised this exact issue early in the preparations for the project, ask ing “why composers would want to write for a combination that had lit tle chance of repeat performances by other musicians?” A similar question might have been asked during the nineteenth century: “Why write a work featuring solo viola, when there is so little chance of a repeat performance?” The paucity of solo viola music prior to the twen tieth century is attributed by many to the scarcity of viola soloists, and it was a rare and daring composer who wrote for the viola with no reasonable expectation for an initial—let alone a repeat—performance. While most

Cordially,

David M. Bynog JAVS Editor

V OLuME 27 NuMBER 2 3