JAVS Spring 2013

F ROM THE E DITOR

marveled at the freshness and inge nuity of the music.

explains what an oboist can teach us about musical phrasing using numbers. • Amanda Wilton, the second-prize winner of the 2012 Dalton Competition, offers suggestions on performance practice issues in Harold in Italy , including innova tive placement options for the soloist. • Our Eclectic Violist department looks at worship violists, includ ing an interview with Diana Christine Clemons. • Our Student Life department showcases three composers who use political, religious, and multi cultural themes in their music. • A new department, Retrospective, looks back and reevaluates music by Leo Sowerby and Alvin Etler. • Our With Viola in Hand depart ment revisits IVC 40, from the perspective of several Chilean vio lists who were getting their first taste of a viola congress. I hope that this issue will inspire you to broaden your horizons or perhaps give that piece of music that you abandoned five years ago another go. After all, you don’t move forward by standing still.

These two experiences demonstrate that while some things grab us immediately, other things take time for us to appreciate. Many factors affect our tastes and views, with par ents, teachers, and friends often tak ing a guiding role in developing our preferences, but our tastes are con stantly evolving. Specific experiences may also greatly affect our tastes: a song or movie might be loved because of an association with a momentous event, while a certain bad experience might forever taint a book or food that we might other wise enjoy. In some instances, we only reevaluate our negative opin ions when forced to, and there are some things for which we know we will never gain an appreciation. For many, the viola—and its music—is an acquired taste (in the words of Nico Muhly, “Appreciating a great violist is like saying, ‘That movie has a great sound engineer’”), and our solo repertoire often proves challenging to audiences. So we vio lists are all too familiar with trying to expand people’s tastes. This issue is all about expanding horizons, opening ourselves to new experi ences, and reevaluating existing pref erences. In addition to two articles about the viola in opera and our interview with Muhly and Sirota, this issue offers a diverse range of articles to expand your horizons:

I vividly recall playing my first opera in college. It was Offenbach’s Les con tes d’Hoffmann , a work that seemed long and tedious. The production was plagued with problems, rehearsals were inefficient and demoralizing, and there was plenty of offstage drama to rival the drama onstage. I vowed that if I never had to play another opera, I would be a lucky man. But things improved with the next opera, Le Nozze di Figaro , and by the time we got to Tosca , I was hooked. Having now played nearly three hundred performances of vari ous operas, I am glad I reconsidered my first impression. I also vividly recall listening to the music of Nadia Sirota and Nico Muhly for the first time. I had ordered Nadia’s CD First Things First shortly after its release in 2009 and immediately listened to it upon its arrival. I was captivated both by the playing and the music, particu larly Muhly’s Étude 1A . Three years later, in preparation for our inter view with these two musicians, I revisited the recording and again

Cordially,

David M. Bynog JAVS Editor

• Joyce Chan, the first-prize winner of the 2012 Dalton Competition,

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