JAVS Fall 2022

purpose, o ering a treasure trove of Romantic showpieces for the viola. A talk by Ken Martinson featured the viola music of Marco Anzoletti, a lesser-known Italian composer whose diabolical etudes rival those of Paganini in di culty. Ken also introduced one of Anzoletti’s viola concertos, easily as di cult as the Brahms violin concerto. Both of these sets of works come from obscure composers, which often makes many reluctant to program them. To those people, I o er a thought experiment: imagine that Chopin, Liszt, and Paganini, with all their brilliance, had been bassoonists instead of pianists and violinists. Would we have any idea who they are today? Between the works of Anzoletti and the Paris Conservatory works, and so many others, the viola actually has a considerable repertoire. All we must do is tap into it—just one reason why conferences such as the AVS’s are so vital. A particularly interesting demonstration from Molly Gebrian’s studio at the University of Arizona featured a set of etudes by Michael Kimber. What is unique about these etudes is that each of them trains the student in a particular technical or musical aspect of modernist and postmodern music. One etude covered constantly changing meters, while another covered serialism through tone rows. As Gebrian herself wrote in her dissertation, one of the major blind spots in the technical curriculum for the viola is that most of the etudes we study by Kreutzer, Rode, and others were written in a common-practice tonal idiom, while most of the solo repertoire originally written for the viola was not. Kimber’s etudes help to fill this gap remarkably well.

So much of the Festival & Congress also focused in on the physiology and psychology of playing the viola. The conference featured events on Body Mapping, a primer on physiology as it relates to viola playing, a presentation on accessibility, and a talk by Molly Gebrian on how practice breaks promote faster learning. The event in this theme I looked forward to the most was a panel on trauma informed pedagogy led by Molly Sharp and AVS Secretary Daphne Gerling and featuring Gebrian, Kayleigh Miller (whose Instagram I recommend you all follow), and mental health professionals Gerard Lawson and Myriam Reynolds as panelists. The central premise of the panel, as Sharp explained, was that the brain’s response to trauma can manifest itself in performance anxiety or even in a student’s lessons. The presenters gave a clear and well-organized explanation of the neurology of the “trauma response,” its long-term e ects on the brain, and how teachers can recognize and respond to these responses in their students. Across all sessions, this year’s AVS Festival impressed with its breadth of scope and diversity of ideas. In an era that demands classical music not to rest on its laurels and watch the world pass it by, this year’s conference resoundingly answered the call by demonstrating that violists are on the cutting edge of classical music in every possible way.

Journal of the American Viola Society / Vol. 38, No. 2, Fall 2022

7