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As instruments go, you might say,
the viola drew an unlucky number in the musical lottery.
It's the middle child of the string family.
Often overlooked in favor of it's flashier sister the violin.
Lots of people have never even heard of it.
Beethoven never wrote a piece for it.
Musicians like to make jokes about it,
they say things like, "Oh, the viola, where bad violinist goes to die".
And indeed it has a flaw.
This instrument, for it to be acoustically perfect,
would need to have strings over half a foot longer that it does.
Which would make it unplayable except maybe
to a professional basketball player.
And, therefore this is an instrument of compromise.
Is it unable to resonate as fully as it would if it had very long strings.
And so the sound is somewhat different than perfect.
It does not vibrate as much, speaks slowly,
the instrument is temperamental, some might say irascible.
And it's difficult to play.
So why do I play this instrument?
The reason is, when I was eight years old,
back in the days when schools had music,
I sat in my class and a group of professional musicians came
explain the instruments of the orchestra, one by one,
and when it came time for the viola player --
he played this
(Music)
Only the viola can make this sound.
And lucky for us, Johannes Brahms knew that and
wrote this incredible song, or at least the beginning of it.
These troublesome short strings are what give
the instrument it's incredible character,
the dark urgency in it's sound that seem to
come from the earth and strain towards the sky.
From the moment I heard that sound
I knew it would be mine.
From that moment on, I was a viola player.
I am not ashamed to say so, I must say.
It is true that there are difficulties about the instrument.
But in those limitations we find its possibilities.
It's the instrument closest in range to the human voice.
And composers have been pretty keen to exploit that fact.
Like the human voice, it's fallible.
In it's upper reaches it chokes.
(Music)
That’s the "Wailing Song" by György Kurtág.
And in it's depth it grumbles, it growls, it sighs.
In the late nineteen-twenties the composer,
called Paul Hindemith wrote a very short piece for viola,
in a time when German banks were printing money
faster than they possibly could,
where armories were building weapons,
when the country was in chaos.
He wrote this.
(Music)
You can see how the instrument can be pushed
to the extremes of character.
It's the musical chameleon, a character actor.
I am quite contempt not being the leading lady
I like the fact that I am able to
exploit the flaws of the instrument and find new worlds of sound.
I think it's telling that many composers
wrote for the viola at the end of their lives,
when the time for flash and brawn had past,
they chose the imperfect instrument to tell their secrets.
I am gonna leave you with the piece by Franz Liszt,
one of his last songs, just called "Romance Oubliee" - "Forgotten Romance."
(Music)
For me, the story is in the sound,
the perfection is in the imperfection.
I may never be as virtuosic as a violinist
or as heroic as a cellist --
I'd rather play the imperfect instrument.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)