Favourite Pieces¶
So recently I got an email that shared with me the upcoming season of an orchestra that I used to play in but don’t play in for the main reason that I do not exist in two places at once. They have a history of really good repertoire choices and it got me thinking about the favourite pieces (and sections of pieces) I’ve played on a solo, chamber and orchestral level.
I realise I enjoy pieces not just for how fun they are to play, but also for everything tangential to them - the memories, the people, etc…
Solo¶
Brahms Viola Sonata No. 2, Op 120 No. 2 This is one of the staples of the viola repertoire and I particularly love the first movement. I had just gone to Japan in the autumn of 2016 and the opening theme of the piece gave really strong autumnal vibes. The section of the piece that I really enjoyed and remembered, however, is this one.
The coda of the first movement is so magical: the syncopated viola line against piano triplets crescendoing to that E major 7th chord is just sooooooo amazing and gorgeous. And after that, the second theme comes back as the viola and piano dance with a two against three rhythm.
It feels like time stops and you’re being lifted into the clouds. It’s still a go-to piece for me when I feel a certain way.
Glazunov Elegy for Viola and Piano, Op 44 Another autumnal piece - really reflective and introspective. It’s so simply structured - not many things are simpler than ternary form - but there is so much in this piece.
I particularly enjoy the agitato section that appears in the exposition and recap, particularly here. The recording doesn’t do it that way, but I do a short breath between the B flat and G in the second bar of the YT screen. It gives a depth of emotion to the piece - almost as though you are choking back the emotions as you reach the E flat.
This piece reminds me of the five stages of grief and maybe if you listen to it you will see it too. The way that Glazunov goes from the low registers of the viola to the emotional climax - as usual, with a subito piano - within a few seconds really hits home whenever I play this piece. And depending on how I feel it sometimes becomes an outlet for me to express how I’m feeling. Maybe it’s passion, maybe it’s sadness, maybe it’s peace, but it always feels like me.
Hindemith Der Schwanendreher It wouldn’t be a list without some Viola Moments and one of the classic viola moments is a violist suggesting a Hindemith piece. This piece starts with a cadenza which gives zero warm up opportunity - and it’s not even a simple one at that!
Yet what I really love about this piece is the third movement. It’s a series of variations on a folk song called “have you seen the swan turner” - which gives the concerto its name. Particularly I enjoy the whole section from figure B till here (I have to choose somewhere to end the excerpt, otherwise I’d end up choosing the whole piece). At the double bar line if I’ve nailed the double stops in figure B it feels like a huge accomplishment and like you’re flying on a rocket - although the part after the double stops is a lot tougher haha.
I also really love this section to the end. There’s so much dialogue between solo and accompaniment and parts where each of you are going crazy and the feeling of accomplishment when you both hit a cadence point is sooooo good. And the final flourish is really satisfying, particularly the chromatic at figure W and octaves and thirds at X (although the octaves need some serious practising). I could go on about this piece for ever.
Walton Viola Concerto I think I always come to this piece when I think of my friends and how I can be a better friend to support them. The sense of longing and sognando - dreaming - here is so powerful, with the G minor arpeggio showing that the strongest emotions are usually felt with restraint.
And it comes back at the end of the piece :heart-eyes:
Chamber¶
Mendelssohn String Quartet No. 1 in E flat major, Op 12 I had the privilege of playing this piece in high school with some of my closest friends and I feel like a lot of the chamber experiences I’ve had since then have been about recapturing how I felt when playing this piece with them.
They’ve all gone on to do lots of amazing things both within the world of music and outside, and I do think fondly of them often. Working on this piece was one of the most enjoyable experiences I’ve had when I was in school. It’s quite crazy to think about, but Mendelssohn composed this when he was twelve? thirteen? and when we played it for the first time, we were already older than he was when he wrote the quartet.
I especially enjoy the fourth movement. I am partial towards pieces that show strong emotion and the dark and stormy start to the fourth movement in the relative minor is such a powerful start to a movement. Within the first ten seconds, it has everything - a big opening flourish following which each instrument joins in; increasing harmonic tension with the harmonic pulse going from one chord in a bar, to two, to a dramatic series of eight chords that set up the main theme perfectly.
I really wonder what was going through Mendy’s mind when he wrote this - what d e e p d a r k thoughts were coursing through his mind. It’s an extremely personal composition that oscillates between tranquillo and agitato, outbursts from the first violin and tutti unison passages, and more. It’s an incredibly balanced piece - and that’s what makes it so unhinged and potent.
The Listesso tempo section really punches it in for me. Every cadence shows that we’ve made it through the relative minor and the tonic chord in the home key of E flat major is sooooo satisfying.
The piece ends on such a peaceful note, recapitulating the bliss of the opening movement. Clearly I love this piece and how it subverts the tonic chord to give one last beautiful expression of emotion.
Smetana String Quartet No. 1, From My Life The opening is probably all I need to say.
Halvorsen Passacaglia for Violin and Viola I had so much fun playing this piece with my best friend. It’s been a piece that I’ve always wanted to play and I am so glad that the opportunity came up - every bit of it was so fun, we’d do some work on the piece, play FIFA, talk about our respective experiences in NS and then play with his dogs. Beyond the music, I am very grateful to have his steady presence as one of my friends and a person I can count on.
This is another piece that when playing it with my friends I’ve always tried to capture the same sense of happiness and joy that I did when playing. I knew at the time that this would be one of the memories that I would treasure for a long time, and I am right about that several years later. If you can find it, the recording from this concert is up on YT, but I won’t link it. You can find it yourself, it has a couple thousand views.
Orchestra¶
Rachmaninoff Symphony No. 2 I know Rach is a super cheesy composer but this is the symphony that always gets me. I played this as my second ever orchestral concert in May 2022 and it was such a memorable experience that it has become the benchmark for me. I would really love it if this concert could just repeat itself for every project. It was a short ~2 week project, and we had rehearsals on five out of seven days of the concert week. I don’t think I felt tired from that, even though we went go-karting on the rest day.
Personally, it was also a really tough time for me as the next couple years of my life were under a lot of uncertainty at that time and the narrative arc of the symphony was something that really resonated with me - from its dark opening and main theme (similar to the main theme of Rach 3), to the depth of emotion in the third movement and the joy and dance in the finale.
I remember doing the concerts, and the magical buildup hitting the section where the syncopations in the strings create a sense of anticipation to a powerful climax of emotion with the syncopations returning as the orchestra slowly descends the mountain of emotion and I was thinking “yes, everything’s gonna be okay. It’s not okay now, but it will be”. It was so incredibly comforting to play this piece and I want to always keep that memory.
Plus Rach always has great viola parts, and his use of the cor anglais is so good in bringing out a melancholy character. The clarinet solo in the third movement was so good I still remember it, which is probably unfair for many clarinettists I’ve met since then.
Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 3 Technically this counts as solo but not for me, I’m not a pianist. We had a really amazing pianist play with ICSO and it was such a joy to play this piece with him. I look forward to when he becomes an accomplished concert pianist (well, if that’s what he wants - he’s incredibly talented and I could see him doing lots of things).
I really love the third movement as a set of theme and variations and from an orchestral perspective I particularly enjoy this section - I remember holding back tears throughout that whole section when playing it with him. He’s worked so hard for it, and it was in that moment that it really dawned how well it had all come together.
That being said I think the same section is so so similar to Rach 2 (symphony), and the feeling was pretty much the same. #cheesythingswork #lactoseintolerant
Prokofiev Symphony No. 5 It was soo good to play this and have this rotating in my mind while playing it. Also, I really loved how incessantly persistent the ending of the symphony is, like a factory production line. Something about the violins just playing lots of repeated open E strings just works really well for an unexplained reason. It really descends into chaos and it’s a chance for everyone to go crazy and have fun.
What’s really special about the ending is that right as it goes into chaos, it subverts the expectation of a big ending and goes instead into a curious orchestration in the coda that somehow proves its unflappability rather than detracts from it.
Mahler Symphony No. 1 The last movement is a force of nature. To think that this was how Mahler introduced himself to the world is rather astonishing, and his use of fourths is extremely powerful. The massive orchestration allows people to showcase what they’re capable of, particularly the brass.
Also I really love it when seven-eight horns stand up and play :) It’s such a powerful moment when their sound washes over the orchestra that we as string players can only just watch. I’m also aware that it’s a ridiculously high and hard passage for them, and it is so cool when people nail it.
Strauss Alpine Symphony I really felt this piece when climbing a mountain in Albania. Luckily we didn’t have the storm that the piece does as its climax, but the storm is one thing that was really challenging and fun to play - and quite cool that the violas have a big moment in it.
I think this is one of the pieces that orchestras in London would probably hesitate from playing due to the massive logistic requirements (offstage brass, wind machine, thunder sheet) and high bar to entry (since it’s such a hard piece and Strauss loves his massive divisis), but if they did, I would love to have the chance to play this piece again. I feel like this piece and other tone poems by Strauss shaped the direction of 20th Century film music (more on that in a bit).
I am gonna delete this post so fast if I read it back in a few months/years, this is more personal that I expected.