JAVS Spring 2013

loses not a little by being transposed a fifth down and played with piano. Nicely played as it is here, I can’t help wishing that the CD time had rather been used to respect Joachim’s changing scheme of repeats in the Variations (none are observed here). Be that as it may, I enjoyed this recital very much. Patricia McCarty is a stylish performer who effective ly uses the beautifully dark tone of her viola to char acterize the music to its best advantage. She and Eric Larsen achieve some moments of breathtaking beau ty that are all the more convincing for the viola being realistically balanced within the sound picture (the recording was made at the Meadowmount School of Music, where both artists teach). All Viola, All the Time: Music for Multiple Violas by Scott Slapin . All parts performed by Scott Slapin and Tanya Solomon, violas. Available via digital down load. For information, visit scottslapin.com. This latest recording by the ever-enterprising Scott Slapin—a download-only product—includes compo sitions for violas in varying numbers, from unaccom panied to (in P. D. Q. Bach’s immortal phrase) “an awful lot” of them. In a technical tour de force , all parts are played by Slapin and Tanya Solomon. I was glad to catch up with Recitative , a piece commis sioned by the Primrose Competition in 2008 and widely played since; here it is eloquently performed by the composer in a recording from 2007, the ink as it were still fresh on the manuscript. Capricious , Slapin’s witty homage to his late teacher Emanuel Vardi, was performed to great acclaim at the con cluding concert of the Rochester Viola Congress. It would be nice to know who plays which of the three parts here, but it actually doesn’t matter: balance and ensemble are perfectly unanimous, and the multiple quotations of twelve Paganini caprices come through loud and clear. The four-movement Suite for Solo Viola and Four-Part Viola Ensemble sounded vaguely familiar, and on closer inspection it turned out to be identical with the Suite for Two Violas featured in a previous Slapin CD, Reflection . The enlarged instru mentation doesn’t add anything essential, but it’s fun to hear, as is Sketches , a five-minute viola quartet that kept reminding me of John Denver’s Annie’s Song .

Although Slapin doesn’t require its separate parts to be played in the published order, Five Pieces for a Memorial Concert works very well as a succession of variously scored pieces of a mostly melancholy hue (they were written for a concert in memory of Slapin’s mother, who passed on in 2008). At the group’s heart is the unaccompanied Elegy-Caprice , beautifully intoned by the composer, and the four part Postlude pays homage to his mother (a cellist) by alluding to the Sarabande from Bach’s D-Minor Suite. Slapin’s unashamedly tonal music, needless to say, fits the viola like the proverbial glove and, equal ly obviously, receives here ideal performances from both players in their various roles. The recording quality is agreeably life-like. Rolla: Viola Sonatas in E-flat Major, op. 3, no. 1; D Minor, op. 3, no. 2; and C Major; Duetto in A Major for Violin and Viola, op. 18, no. 1; 3 Esercizi . Jennifer Stumm, viola; Connie Shih, piano; Liza Ferschtman, violin. Naxos 8.572010. Alessandro Rolla has to be the most productive com poser of viola music who ever lived. Alone, the list ing of the relevant works in Michael Jappe’s indis pensable Viola Bibliographie fills thirty-six pages; it includes concertos and other orchestrally accompa nied pieces, sonatas with basso continuo, duos with violin or cello as well as for two violas, and a smat tering of études. The latter three categories are repre sented in Jennifer Stumm’s enjoyable recording, which obviously can only be a drop in the proverbial bucket. Whether in duo or on her own, Stumm plays with precise articulation, elegance, and beauty of tone. Rolla’s music makes continual excursions to the viola’s highest register, and Stumm takes these gallantly in her stride. She is well matched with vio linist Liza Ferschtman in a duo that presumably was chosen because Rolla has the viola start every move ment to the violin’s accompaniment! It also includes a thirty-second “preview” of the Finale between the first two movements (“ Allegro bizzarro ,” indeed!). In the basso-continuo-accompanied sonatas, the piano part has been realized by the Italian scholar Franco Tamponi, who produces the odd passage of two against-three rhythm that sticks out in this context (for all his industry, Rolla wasn’t the world’s most

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