Violinist Yehudi Menuhin’s Unparalleled Tonal Purity
There’s never been another violinist like the young Yehudi Menuhin. As an adolescent, gifted with boundless talent and utter unselfconsciousness, Menuhin scaled the most exalted artistic heights, producing tones of unparalleled…
Making His Imprint: These Seven Athletes Discovered Happiness in Hiroshi Iizuka’s Violas
Caeli Smith met her dream viola in 2013, a few days after Thanksgiving, at the home of Hiroshi Iizuka, its maker. “I picked it up and played a scale,” she wrote the…
“Among the Oldest Violas in the World”: Teng Li Has Discovered a Musical Mentor in her Zanetto, Notwithstanding Its Size
By Laurence Vittes | From the September-October 2020 issue of Strings magazineWhen Chinese-Canadian violist Teng Li was named principal of the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2018, after 14 years as principal in Toronto,…
Arthur Grumiaux – Bach Partita No.2 in D minor, BWV 1004 (V. Ciaccona p1-2)
Arthur Grumiaux may have been the most elegant violinist of the twentieth century. He certainly enjoyed one of its premiere solo careers. Emerging after World War II, at a time…
11 Elite Performers Select the Greatest Viola Pieces Ever
For those living in alto clef, here are some of the best loved, and most overlooked, viola works of all time, as chosen by 11 top viola players. Searching for good solo…
The Time Was Ripe For A Viola Superstar To Emerge
Violist William Primrose, born in 1904, arrived on the music scene at just the right moment. For most of its history, the viola has been the neglected middle child of…
Erica Morini, A Violinist, Accomplished The Nearly Impossible For Sixty Years
For sixty years, violinist Erica Morini pulled off the near-impossible. In a mid-twentieth-century music world dominated by male stars, in front of a listening public in thrall to the…
Pablo Casals Brought Bach’s Cello Suites to Light
Pablo Casals was a towering figure in the history of cello playing—at once artist, exponent, exemplar, and liberator. The greatest among his musician colleagues revered him: Fritz Kreisler called…
The Amadeus Quartet: Unquestionably English but distinctly Viennese
Martin Lovett passed away on the 29th of April, 2020. The British cellist, ninety-three years old at his death, was the last surviving member of the Amadeus Quartet, Britain’s…
Live At Spectrum NYC: Quiet Rhythms William Susman: Composer/Piano
‘Quiet Rhythms’ is a monumental solo piano cycle by American composer William Susman, comprising four books of music, each one a set of 22 short pieces with 11 Prologues and…