June 18, 2025 | Author: Dominic Nicholas | Category:Instruments | Viola
Tomoe Badiarova
The unkind butt of many a musical joke, the viola sometimes gets a bad press. But we think it’s one of the loveliest instruments in the orchestra—in its upper range almost as brilliant as the violin, it’s lower range utterly distinct: veiled, melancholic and mysterious.
Its role in the centre of an ensemble means that it hasn’t attracted so much of the limelight as a solo instrument down the years, but there are, nevertheless, some really wonderful works written for it. Here are five of the best.
It’s no surprise that one of the prolific of all composers eventually found his way towards writing a viola concerto. Possibly the very first concerto for the instrument, Telemann’s Viola Concerto in G major (composed around 1716–1721) is also one of the most accessible for intermediate players—it showcases the elegance and tunefulness of the emerging galant style rather than the dense and often tricky counterpoint of Bach or Handel. It consists of four movements, a noble and singing Largo, a bright and crisp Allegro, an introspective Andante and a final joyful Presto.
Mozart was known to have soft spot for the viola, often preferring to play the instrument in string quartet performances. The greatest compositional expression of his love for the instrument is his Sinfonia Concertante in Eb K.364, written in 1779 at the age of just 23. True to the concertante form the work actually features more than one soloist, in this case a violin and viola, but they are treated as equal partners throughout, interacting with each other and the orchestra almost as if they were characters in an opera. If the whole work is bit tricky to tackle, be sure to check out our easier arrangement of the sublime secondmovement.
One of the most unusual works in the repertoire, Berlioz’s Harold in Italy (1834) is both symphony and concerto and also neither. Berlioz was approached by Niccolò Paganini to write a new work that he could play on his newly acquired Stradivarius viola. The result was this four movement work cast as a symphony, but with an obligato viola part to represent the hero Harold. Paganini was none too impressed with the result, wanting something more virtuosic, though he later changed his mind after hearing a performance of the piece. The work certainly contains some of the most delightful music Berlioz penned, including the second movement March of the Pilgrims, which was encored at the premiere, and bubbly and bucolic third movement Serenade.
Schumann’s Märchenbilder (1851), are a collection of four characteristic pieces for viola and piano. Schumann’s title, which translates as ‘Fairy Tale Pictures’, suggests a programmatic element, but he provides no clues as to what these might be, leaving it to the imagination of listeners. Each movement is certainly colourful, the first (Nicht schnell—‘Not fast’) lyrical and gentle, with more than a hint of the melancholic; the second (Lebhaft—‘Lively’) dramatic, energetic and with much dialogue between solo and accompanist; the third (Rasch—‘Quick’) is agitated, dark and tense, with a gentler central section that only served to emphasise the point; the last (Langsam, mit melancholischem Ausdruck—‘Slowly, with melancholic expression’) is full of a sense of introspection and mourning.
An underrated gem of 20th-century viola repertoire, Arnold Bax’s Sonata for Viola and Piano is a lush and deeply emotional work. Think late-romantic composers such as Debussy, Scriabin and early Schoenberg and sprinkle with a little Celtic mysticism and you might be able roughly to imagine it. The piano part is very much a full player in the unfolding drama of the work, which is full of unexpected key changes, shifts of mood, complex crunchy harmony and a sense of longing and nostalgia—appropriately enough for a work written in 1922, in the aftermath of the First World War.
