I received word this afternoon that my old viola has found a new owner. Some people like to name their instruments, I never got into that. Now that I’ve learned of the sale of my first viola, I wish I had named her (for lack of a name, I’ll settle at least on the nautical convention of the female pronoun). We went through a lot together.
She was my first – I started on the violin and went from 4th grade until my sophomore year of college as a violinist. The dusky-eyed beauty that is the viola seduced me the spring before I transferred to the University of Puget Sound (UPS). Up to this point I was intent on some sort of business-oriented degree, perhaps international relations/business or something of that sort. I was taking part in a chamber music summer session at UPS and word came down that there was a shortage of violists, and there was need for one to play one of the Mozart flute quartets. I took up a borrowed instrument, and the rest was history.
The crush hit hard, and I traded my violin in for a viola by the same maker, William Watson, who was also my private violin teacher through high school. She was a large instrument – a full 17 and 5/8 inches length along the body (average is 16 to 16.5 inches), modeled on a great tenor viola made by the early Brescian maker Gasparo da Salo (1542-1609) and housed in the collection of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. I did a lot with her, here are some highlights:
- Performed concertos or works with orchestra by Bach, Britten, Bruch, Castaldo, Hindemith, Mozart, and Walton.
- Played in masterclasses and/or coachings for Joseph dePaquale, Donald McInnes, Kim Kashkashian, Karen Tuttle, Phil Setzer, the Takacs Quartet, the Guarneri Quartet, and the Peabody Trio.
- Won my job with the Oregon Symphony.
- Premiered half a dozen new works for viola.
- Played three summers with the National Orchestral Institute, and three summers as a Fellow at the Tanglewood Music Center.
- Played two years with the Ethos Quartet.
I’m sure that I’m leaving a lot of stuff out due to lack of recall, but you get the idea.
I’m glad that she’ll be played by someone who has fallen under her spell, and that it will be a long and fruitful collaboration. It’s a bittersweet occasion, as I’ll miss her sound and feel, and since her maker passed away last fall. It marks the closing of a real door with my youth, and a time when everything was new.