Old Italian ViolaI had been searching for a viola to buy for three years when I decided to go to London, the world's center of fine string instruments. After 5 days of looking at every viola available at different dealer's shops, I entered the shop of John and Arthur Beare in Soho. It was love at first sight, even before I got a chance to play it. Visually, it is truly unique. It measures 41.9cm in length of body,and 18.7 and 23.3cm in widths which makes it comfortable to play. The Back is one piece of attractively figured maple with broad, irregular flame; the sides and scroll are plain and the table in one piece of spruce with grains generally of medium width. The varnish is of a light orange-brown color. When I got a chance to play it, again I was captivated by it's deep rich sound. With violas, one usually has to choose between an instrument with a deep baritone timber and little projection, or a powerfully sounding instrument with a mezzo-soprano sound. This viola has the most beautiful, rich dark timbered tone yet sound as if there were an amplifier built in to it. After testing it's sound in various halls and after playing for different people, the decision was unanimous. This is a truly great viola. It was built between 1710 and 1730 by an associate of Cappa and Celoniatus in Turin, Italy. This is very strange to me since it was built before most of the pieces I play were written. Unfortunately, this viola was in an attic for the past 150 years so it's difficult to know who owned it in the past. Playing an instrument like this expands the possibilities of what a player can do both musically and technically. The range of color sound that can be produced triples and what were once difficult passages, become much simpler. I consider myself truly blessed to have found this viola. I hope you'll get a chance to hear it sometime. |
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Modern ViolaI'm hesitant to call my other viola my "second viola" because I love it just as much. The first time I encountered one of the violas of Hiroshi Iizuka (those are 2 'i's) was at the age of 10, when my mother and I met with Michael Tree - the violist of the Guarneri Quartet. Since then I found out that so many violists, whos playing I love, play on his instruments. One of the problems of building a viola, is that the relationship between it's size and range is usually not correct, and therefore the viola is often weak compared to a violin or a cello. If one were to build a viola sized based on it's relative range between a violin and a cello, it would be too big to play. In fact, many of the most famous violas built in the 16th century (by Gaspar de Salo for example) were built so large, that violin makers in the 19th century trimmed them down to a manegable size, and often destroyed their sound. Hiroshi has been experimenting with violas of unorthodox shapes for many years, and has come up with a few different models that maximize the viola's body size, without making the instrument difficult to play. He is originally from Japan, and has been working outside Philadelphia for a few decades now. When I moved to Berlin and studied with Wilfried Strehle, I fell in love with his Iizuka viola. The next time I was in Phladelphia, I visited Hiroshi, and asked him to build another one exacly like Wifried's. 2 years later, I was ecstatic to discover that Hiroshi has built one of his best violas in my opinion, and it was all mine. |