Latest news with #viola
New York Times
a day ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
A Musician on a Mission to Make Us Pay Attention to the Viola
Hector Berlioz's 'Harold in Italy' is full of wandering. In his memoirs he wrote that, through this symphony with viola obbligato, based on the mood of Lord Byron's poem 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage' and inspired by the composer's unfruitful time in Italy, he sought to make the viola 'a kind of melancholy dreamer.' The violist Lawrence Power has spent his whole career playing 'Harold in Italy.' But, he said in an interview, he has always been 'completely uncomfortable and just confused by the whole piece.' It's essentially a symphony, but completely different from a conventional one, with a viola solo part that drifts in and out of the action. Berlioz 'obviously had something in mind to have the viola separate from the orchestra,' Power said, guessing that the composer 'had something theatrical in mind.' In a dramatized performance of 'Harold in Italy' with Aurora Orchestra at the Southbank Center in London late last month, Power leaned into that wandering, theatrical spirit, something that has also become a hallmark of his recent work. After whistling the piece's idée fixe, or recurring theme, while strolling from a raised platform amid the ensemble, Power recited searching sections of Berlioz's memoirs and wandered through the auditorium, playing sections of the obbligato part with a distant, slightly aloof expression. This is just another idiosyncratic project by Power, somebody who has championed the viola for the past 25 years, with a particular focus on new work. He's not alone: Viola soloists often have to become champions for their instrument, which has been underappreciated throughout its history. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
South China Morning Post
26-06-2025
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
Stradivarius viola valued at US$30 million could be the world's most expensive instrument
At the US Library of Congress in Washington in May, Roberto Díaz was playing on an exceedingly rare viola. What did not cross his mind, he says, is just how much the maple and spruce instrument clutched beneath his chin was worth. Advertisement Which is perhaps a good thing. The Tuscan-Medici viola from the workshop of Antonio Stradivari was recently valued at US$30 million, likely making it the most expensive musical instrument in the world. 'You know, it's funny, I never really thought about it that way,' Díaz says a couple of days after the concert. 'The price tag is so surreal in the sense that it almost doesn't really register.' Díaz is president and chief executive of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, in the US state of Pennsylvania, and through Curtis he has developed a relationship with the viola, performing on it from time to time beginning nearly 15 years ago. It was on this instrument, made in 1690, that Díaz recorded Jennifer Higdon's Viola Concerto, an album that won two Grammy Awards in 2018. Advertisement So it was natural that Díaz, along with a handful of Curtis students, was onstage for the Library of Congress concert, organised to celebrate a new milestone in the instrument's 335-year journey: its donation to the Library of Congress as a gift to the nation.
