Advanced Viola Scale Studies

I'm delighted to announce that the viola transcription of my Advanced Violin Scale Studies is finally available from Mel Bay.

I'm also totally thrilled that they have used a portrait of my 1952 Carl Becker viola for the cover. My father bought the instrument in Chicago while he was a graduate student at the Illinois Institute of Technology. He told me that when he bought it they "wheeled out the old man," so that my father could meet the maker. It was the instrument that my father used to win the audition for principal viola of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, though the powers that were (then) immediately went searching for a higher-prestige instrument for him.

My father always kept the Becker on hand, though. He brought it to Tanglewood with him and loaned it to students from time to time. The only student I recall connected with it was the composer Paul Chihara. Then around thirty years ago he gave the instrument to my brother Marshall. Out of a sense of fairness, he gave me one of his instruments as well: a pretty-looking Italian viola that never sounded as good as it looked. My brother Richard, who doesn't play, got a bunch of bows that my father never used.

I always thought that the Becker was kind of plain and ugly, and Marshall thought that I had gotten the better instrument. We were both wrong. The Becker is quite beautiful, and because of the way it plays and responds, it is far superior to the pretty Italian viola I had been using.

My brother didn't like playing the Becker, so he had an instrument made that satisfied his needs. The Becker sat abandoned in his closet, unplayed.

After my brother died the official ownership of the instrument went back to my parents, but the physical instrument moved to my closet. After my mother's death the instrument became mine. I had a luthier fix some open seams and straighten the bridge. After playing the Becker for a minute or so, I put away the Italian instrument and haven't touched it since. The sound of the Becker was the viola sound that I had in my ear since I was a tiny baby. It brings me joy every day.

And now its face is on the cover of this book of scale pieces.

You can find the music (both for a print edition and an electronic edition) on this page of the Mel Bay website.

Nathan Groot is making video recordings of all the pieces in the book. You can watch and listen here.