Viola - Violists

Violists

There are few truly well-known viola virtuosi, perhaps because little virtuoso viola music was written before the twentieth century. Pre-twentieth century viola players of note include Alessandro Rolla, Antonio Rolla, Chrétien Urhan, Casimir Ney, Louis van Waefelghem, and Hermann Ritter. The most important viola pioneers from the twentieth century were Lionel Tertis, William Primrose, Paul Hindemith, Théophile Laforge, Cecil Aronowitz, Maurice Vieux, Vadim Borisovsky, Lillian Fuchs, Frederick Riddle, Walter Trampler, Ernst Wallfisch, Csaba Erdélyi, the only violist to ever win the Carl Flesch International Violin Competition, and Emanuel Vardi, the first violist to record the 24 Caprices by Paganini on viola. Many noted violinists have publicly performed and recorded on the viola as well, among them Eugène Ysaÿe, Yehudi Menuhin, David Oistrakh, Pinchas Zukerman, Maxim Vengerov, Julian Rachlin and Nigel Kennedy.

Among the great composers, several preferred the viola to the violin when playing in ensembles, the most noted being Ludwig van Beethoven, Johann Sebastian Bach and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Numerous other composers also chose to play the viola in ensembles, including Joseph Haydn, Franz Schubert, Felix Mendelssohn, Antonín Dvořák, and Benjamin Britten. Among those noted both as violists and as composers are Rebecca Clarke and Paul Hindemith. Contemporary composer and violist Kenji Bunch has written a number of viola solos.