JAVS Winter 1991

27

considerable prize which will enable them to study overseas at a leading institution: e.g., the Juilliard School, Curtis Institute, Eastman School, etc. The leading dozen, or so, are featured in a series of TV programs. (In all the years this competition has been held-ten or twelve years, I suppose-every winner has been either a pianist or a violinist. What does this tell you about the music in NZ and the judges?) In the 1990 competition held toward the year's end there appeared who I considered a very talented violist named Christine Bowie. When she appeared and started to play, I said to my daughter: "She's great; she'll be the winner...no question of it...miles ahead of anyone else...." I felt this about the way she played: In relation to the instrument, she was completely at one with it in a way that none of the other competitors were. When the results were announced I couldn't believe it: Two violinists and a flutist had won the major prizes. Later, still feeling disquiet about the whole thing, I dredged up from the depths of my mind, a statement made many years ago by the wife of Everest conqueror Sir Edmund Hillaty, a gifted violist who gave up playing for marriage in the 1950's (girls did so in those days). She said, "People don't understand the viola, they think it is just another, slightly larger, violin." This of course is a great truth, but no one would know it unless they had played it. I was vety surprised when I began to play it myself. The whole character of the instrument, the feel of it, the relationship which one forms with it, even the type of music played hardly bear any relation to the violin at all. Once I am back into the swing of the normal day.. to..day year, I shall certainly give attention to what is available on the Primrose International Viola Archive. It is a wonderful thing to have this valuable archive in such a place. I consider it to be very reckless, culturally, to have all such things stored in European sanctuaries.

-Catherine A. Richards North Otago, New Zealand

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