Four Centuries of Great Music February 22, 2026 Celebrating the Viola

Today on Four Centuries of Great Music I am celebrating the viola. Yes the viola.  The viola is probably the most made fun of instruments, certainly among the strings:
Last night a fire destroyed the viola factory, fortunately no one was injured and nothing of value was lost.

And a violinist I know originally began playing the viola and loved the sound of the instrument.  But his mother who is a musician talked him into changing to the violin because there was no repertoire for the viola.  Well that can be said about the classical and the romantic periods of classical music but not about the 20th and 21st centuries as a lot of music for the viola has been written  since the beginning of the 20th century.  And 20th century viola music is what we will be featuring in today’s episode 

We open with William Walton’s Viola Concerto.  The Viola Concerto was written in 1929 and first performed at the Queen's Hall, London on October 3rd of that year by Paul Hindemith as soloist and the composer conducting the Henry Wood Symphony Orchestra.

William Walton:  Viola Concerto -  I. Andante comodo
William Walton:  Viola Concerto -  II. Vivo von molto preciso
William Walton:  Viola Concerto -  III. Allegro moderato
William Primrose, viola and Sir William Walton conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra
William Primrose - Viola treasures
Oxford University Press

Next on this celebration of the viola on Four Centuries of Great Music we have Marion Bauer’s Sonata for Viola and Piano, Op. 22.  Written in 1932 Marion Bauer’s compositional style straddled the old and the new, with a strong grounding in late Romanticism and French impressionism, and interjections of expressive dissonance. 

The opening movement of her Sonata flows with the liquidity of late Ravel, with a broadly lyrical primary theme. A short piano solo opens the second movement Andante espressivo; Scherzo con moto, with a steady lilting pedal point pulse in triple meter surrounded by a descending contrapuntal line and gentle melody that is passed to the viola. The coy scherzo is marked by pizzicato in the viola and light interplay between the instruments before the Andante material returns. The final Allegro begins with an insistent figure in the piano supporting an agitated viola line. A rhapsodic viola cadenza develops the material from the first section and creates a transition to a pensive middle section featuring an imitative melodic dialogue before the keyboard ushers in a return of the more active opening material. The piece closes with five declamatory chords followed by a dramatic descending flourish in the piano.

Marion Bauer(1882-1955)
Marion Bauer: Sonata for Viola and Piano, Op. 22(1932)
Marion Bauer:  Sonata for Viola and Piano, Op. 22 - I.  Allegretto (rubato)            5:28
Marion Bauer:  Sonata for Viola and Piano, Op. 22  - Il.  Andante espressivo; Scherzo con moto            4:56
Marion Bauer:  Sonata for Viola and Piano, Op. 22 - III.  Allegro
Jonathan Bagg, viola; Mimi Solomon, piano
Viola Revival: Mid-Century Works by Marion Bauer, Ulysses Kay & Margaret Bonds
New Focus Recordings

We close this first hour celebrating the viola with Margaret Bonds: Troubled Water for viola and piano.

That piece was included on her multi-movement Spirituals Suite for piano, and she later arranged it for cello and piano. It is an arrangement of that cello and piano version that we hear on this recording. Bonds treats the concept of water as at the center of this  setting, finding various musical ways to explore its properties. From the flowing opening keyboard accompaniment figure, through passages of cascading arpeggios, rhapsodic sequences, and blues inflected melodic figures, the connection to the soulful original melody is consistently apparent, as Troubled Water drives towards a dramatic end.

Margaret Bonds: Troubled Water
Jonathan Bagg, viola; Mimi Solomon, piano
Viola Revival: Mid-Century Works by Marion Bauer, Ulysses Kay & Margaret Bonds
New Focus Recordings

We open this second hour of this celebration of the viola on Four Centuries of Great Music with Vivian Fine:  Lieder for Viola and Piano.  Vivian Fine wrote that the inspiration for Lieder for Viola and Piano comes from Hugo Wolf, and, in The Song of the Trout, from Schubert. Motifs from these composers are used, but never literally. The intent was to convey the composer’s involvement with the lyric and dramatic elements of traditional lieder in her own language.  Various contrapuntal devices were used throughout the work.  Premiere was on May 2, 1980, New York city, Composers’ Forum, Bruno Walter Auditorium, Lincoln Center Library; Jacob Glick, viola and Vivian Fine, piano

Vivian Fine:  Lieder for Viola and Piano: I. Allegretto
Vivian Fine:  Lieder for Viola and Piano: II. Molto tranquillo
Vivian Fine:  Lieder for Viola and Piano:  III. Allegretto rustico
Vivian Fine:  Lieder for Viola and Piano:  IV. Lento
Vivian Fine:  Lieder for Viola and Piano:  V. Sustained, with Fervor
Vivian Fine:  Lieder for Viola and Piano:  VI. Flowing

Sigrid Karlstrom, viola & Liliya Ugay, piano
Cracking the Glass: Music for Viola and Piano by 20th Century American Women Composers
No label

Next on this celebration of the viola on Four Centuries of Great Music is Arnold Bax’s Sonata for Viola and Piano. Bax began composing a Sonata for Viola and Piano in 1921, and he completed it in January 1922. Violist Lionel Tertis gave the work’s first performance at the Aeolian Hall in November 1922 with Bax at the piano. Its three movements – a turbulent central scherzo flanked by more sorrowful companions – speak of Bax’s gift for melodic invention and ability to bring order to his often discursive, occasionally unruly themes with the support of clear formal structures. 

The sonata opens with soft, chiming piano chords, which provide the syncopated accompaniment to the viola’s main theme, a freshly minted folksong-without-words evocative of Irish balladry. 
The partnership between viola and piano unfolds as an engaging dialogue of equals, with each stepping out with versions of the movement’s ‘Irish’ theme. Bax shifts with ease between diatonic and chromatic harmonies,  In writing for viola, Bax took full account of Tertis’s famously warm tone across the instrument’s range; the resulting contrasts of texture and timbre prove a godsend in the variety they bring to a movement so heavily dependent on a single theme.

The rhapsodic nature of the Molto moderato is dispelled by the piano trills and left-hand ostinato of the sonata’s central movement, a demonic dance.  Bax relaxes the tension at the movement’s midway point with another of his Celtic tunes, a playful affair introduced by the viola and followed soon after by a more reflective melody, as if both belonged to the same bar-room medley. The main theme surfaces again in a haunting coda that moves steadily towards a moto perpetuo flourish; any sense of an ending, however, is abruptly overturned by the Molto lento, with its lowering opening chords and lachrymose viola theme, momentarily repetitive yet gloriously free in its restless spirit. There’s something of Yeats about this closing movement – distilled by Bax, a self-confessed ‘abject worshipper’ of the Irishman’s poetry, into complex chromatic harmonies and the wistful romanticism of his themes.





Arnold Bax(1883–1953)
Arnold Bax: Sonata for Viola and Piano, GP 251 - I. Molto moderato
[10:52]
Arnold Bax:  Sonata for Viola and Piano, GP 251 - II. Allegro energico ma non troppo presto
[7:14]
Arnold Bax:  Sonata for Viola and Piano, GP 251 - III. Molto lento
[8:55]

CANTABILE: ANTHEMS FOR VIOLA 
Jordan Bak viola 
Richard Uttley piano (tracks 2, 4–18)
Delphian Records

I a going to close this celebration of the viola on Four Centuries of Great Music with Rebecca Clarke Prelude, Allegro and Pastorale for viola and clarinet

Rebecca Clarke described the Prelude, Allegro and Pastorale written in 1941 while she was in the united States during the second world war as ‘very simple’ and admitted that she didn’t offer it to any publishers: it ‘came at a time when I was just not bothering about showing things to publishers.’ This was partly due to modesty, but it also reveals something of the obstacles Clarke had to overcome in order to achieve the recognition she deserved (it was eventually published in 2000). Writing for clarinet and viola without piano accompaniment was clearly a challenge Clarke relished and the ingenuity of the dialogue between the two instruments is testimony to her inventiveness and skill. The work is in three sections: the quiet sobriety of Prelude (marked Andante semplice) leads to an angular Allegro vigoroso followed by a rather melancholy Pastorale, marked Poco lento. 



Prelude, Allegro and Pastorale-  Prelude
Prelude, Allegro and Pastorale -  Allegro
Prelude, Allegro and Pastorale -  Pastorale

Philips Dukes, viola and Robert Plane Rahman, clarinet
Clarke: Viola Music
Naxos