JAVS Spring 2006

IN TffiE STUDIO VIOLA MUSINGS

From the scifety ofthe sideLines, 'hors de cornbctt' as it were, sorne reminis cences and observations that might be ofinterest to vioLists thinking about their subtle rru!tier -

critical father, working on his paintings in a cloud of cigarette smoke in rhe other room of our cramped Washington He ights immigrant quarters, was moved to rare compliments. So was Mrs. Jaffe upstairs, who regularly com mented on my progress and repertoire of the month . I was practicing in a fi shbowl (the mak ings of stage fri ght?). lt would be some rwen ty years, however, before r would actually rake up the vio la professionally alo ngside the vio lin- at the Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont and for a variety of chamber ensem bles and recording proj ects here and abroad - after leavi ng rhe first violin section of the C leveland Orchest ra and gaining great ca ree r latitude by joining the music faculty of Smith Co ll ege in Northampton , Mass. A d ecisive incentive to rake up the viola seriously was to coll abo rate as much as poss ibl e with the wonderfu l Italian vio linis t Pina Carmirel li , a t Marlboro and beyond. She had a generous, spa c ious, enveloping sound that cou ld rum velvety feather-light and intimately sou lful , without ever becoming slick, precious, or perfumed . H er experien ce with vio lists had apparently been somewhat unsatisfying, since she complained of them as more li kely t han not to be noisy pri

madonnc. l was sti ll transposing in the Rrahms g-minor Piano Quartet (with the very young Murray Perah ia), during my first viola summer in Marlboro in 1966, when Pina looked over a r me and said: "You are my vio list!" That was often to be the case for some twenty years, until her death. ln this country our coll abo rations we re at Marlboro, on numerous Music from Marlboro tours, on reco rdings for Marlboro (Brahms G Major String Sextet, several Bocche rini quintets) and Nonesuch , as well as in Europe on many reco rd ings for D a Camera Reco rds in Germany (rhe Moza rt Sinfonia Concertante, the Bach Art of Fugue, Vivaldi two violin co rlCcr ti, and chamber pieces of Mozan , M artinu , and Reger). He re I need to recall one more vio la mil estone. (Not to wo rry, all these reminiscences a rc to the point .. .) ln the fall of 1951 the illness of Hugo Gottesman, the violist of t he Busch Quarte t, pre vented him from playing a con cert with the quartet in Manchester, Vermont, at the Southern Ve rmont Art Center. Adolf Busch asked me to substi - tute for him. " But I don't have a viola! " l said. "Oh, Thave o ne my father made fifty years ago, " said Ado lf Busch unapologe tical ly. He handed me a heavy, red -

By Philipp Naegele

At New York's High School of Music and Art, during my ante diluvian time there berween 1941 and 1945, all violini sts we re expected to pl ay vio la too. My initial tangles with the alto clef, sight- reading the Bloch Concerto Grosso, were quite humiliating. It was my first confrontation with tha t classi c choice of e ither read ing 'a minor third lower on the corresponding string', or real ly facing the music ... I plead t he Fift h as to what I've been doing since. One thing, however, was immediately clear to me: vio la #7 was the o ne to sign our for the weekend and rake home. Ir had a spacious, dark-hued , responsive sound. lt made me feel larger than life. Tr made me ask myself what a viola sound might be and how the viola n eeded to be approached differently from the vio li n . I had not yer seen through the fas;ade of th e Casadesus "H andel Viola Concerto" and si milar concoctions and a rra nge ments t hat were standard fare in those pre- Urtex t days, but s imply felt free ro revel in new-found ample sonorities. Even my ever

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