JAVS Spring 2010

SS: I like recording, especially repertoire that isn’t often available. The recording I’m probably best known for is having made the first complete set of Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas on viola. It was also my first solo CD. Now that’s it’s gotten enough good reviews and enough time has passed, I’ll confess that we did that recording in my mother’s living room in Somerville, New Jersey. The room had great acoustics (there was a lot of wood). It was quite a process. We had to first turn everything off (including the refrigerator and heating). It was January and snowing. Then we had to get takes between dogs barking and planes overhead en route to Newark. Since then, we’ve learned to do things much more easi ly. I’ve been working with my engineer, Larry Bentley, for over a decade. He has a great sound-proof studio in North Plainfield, New Jersey, and we work very quickly together because we know what will work and what won’t. A couple years ago in Larry’s studio, I re-record ed all the Sonatas and Partitas for volume one of Eroica Classical Recording’s series Baroque Preludes, Dances, and Fugues . (Tanya recorded all the Cello Suites for vol ume two.) It was much easier the second time around! Like anything else, recording gets better the more you do it. Advances in technology haven’t hurt either. Many things you can do today in a studio didn’t exist when we started, or it took forever to accomplish them. I don’t believe in taking forever to record. Either you can play it or you can’t. And if you can’t, no amount of editing is going to make it sound like you can. DMB: Several of the works you have recorded are transcriptions of technically difficult works for the violin (most recently the Paganini Caprices). Why did you choose to tackle these works? SS: The two main areas in playing are musicality and technique. Neither can exist without the other. The Paganini Caprices really stretch the viola to its outer limits. Occasionally a bit past them! They are an important part of the viola’s history—all as technical studies and a few as concert pieces. Paganini didn’t per form most of them either; he wrote them as etudes for his own practice (Paganini also played viola). Until quite recently, almost all violists had full training as vio linists before switching. Therefore their training also included the Caprices. Now that we’re in an era where

SS: It depends on what the piece is. If it’s for unac companied viola, I’ll work the piece out on the viola. If it’s a viola duo, I usually end up writing it on viola and dragging Tanya in every half hour to try some thing new. She’s been a good sport about that so far! The more other instruments that are involved, the more the piece gets worked out on the piano. But there’s a certain “string color” that makes certain chords sound better and others not so good. With small groups of strings, I don’t always trust that if it sounds good on the keyboard it will sound good when transferred over. So if I have the instrument available I’m writing for, nothing beats trying it out on that. DMB: You have mentioned your wife, Tanya, who is also an accomplished violist and frequent musical partner. Have there been difficult career decisions with two violists in the household? SS: We work really well together. People often ask about conflict, but there really isn’t any. We both enjoy playing duo recitals, and we trade off playing the first and second parts. So that we don’t get confused in the concert, the music we play from isn’t marked “Viola I” and “Viola II,” it’s labeled “Scott” and “Tanya.” We met touring with a chamber group; we were the only two violists. I remember we fought not about who would get to sit principal, but rather about who wouldn’t have to do it! (I won and enjoyed the rest of the tour not having to worry about taking care of bowings.) Most of the time we have been lucky to get two jobs together. It was Tanya who introduced me to orchestral playing since I was not trained for it. At the end of our tour with the chamber group, she got a job as principal vio list in the Chattanooga Symphony in eastern Tennessee. Soon there was an opening for principal viola in the Knoxville Symphony, also in eastern Tennessee. I was terrified. I didn’t know the first thing about taking an audition. She showed me how to play the excerpts and somehow got me through it (I won the job). We’ve been traveling about with orchestral jobs ever since. DMB: As a performer (and composer), you have done a good bit of recording. What are your feel ings about the recording process and how these recordings have been affecting your career?

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