JAVS Spring 2006

force. How often has the viola's C string been violated, with the rasping pitches pushed sharp, in the climactic moments of the funeral march in the Schumann Pitl1W Quintet. Was it wise for Hindemith to suggest, even if only once, that beauty of sound could be beside the point, espe cially at a ti me when there was so li ttle of it around anyhow? Por better or worse, for roday's violists there appears to be rela tively li ttle from the past seventy five years of viola playing to emu late, for want of comparably impress ive and all-powerfu l sonic models such as have inspired vio linists and cellists ro imitation or rejection. The tonal characteris

ti cs, and therefore the techni cal approaches to tone production of the great violinists and cellists, when transferred directly ro the viola, do nor ring true and ca n be musically distracting. Bow pres sure overload, f.qsr vibrato, that all -purpose, globalized expressive intensity so familiar from count less highly skilled conservatory graduates, those Heifetz shifts, those coy Kreislerisms, that pref erence for high ove r low position playing of Menuhin, Ysaye pushed to the lushest limi ts- all are problematic enough in the ep igonous hands of a younger generation of violinists lacking their own voices in their desire to please, bur are even more distract ing when translated to the viola.

William Primrose's demonstration that one could bring a violinist's virtuosity to the playing of the viola was perhaps historically nec essa ry, but may also have had the effect of tempting others to think of the viola as an outsized vio lin ... More promising for the viola, then, seems to be the cello's son ic domain with its darker hues and a nobility and confidence facilitated by a large sounding chamber, and that preference for low positions and open strings preached so persuasively by Casals. Like the cello, the viola is much less standardized in size and shape than the violin . The cello is played in a great variety of ways with respect tO endpin and posi tioning, bow hold, vibratO, or

GEOFFREY OVINGTON MAKER OF VIOLINS, VIOLAS AND CELLI Instruments of Distinction Played Internationally

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