Poor viola! Neglected and ridiculed for centuries this (really very lovely) instrument has been the receiving end of many a joke and jibe. Berlioz, who had a soft spot for the viola, believed it to be ...

Later this month, violist Lawrence Power will perform the Scottish premiere of Anders Hillborg’s Viola Concerto with the SCO. He tells Ken Walton how the Fab Four ended up in the mix Did you know with ...

On Sunday, Jan. 25, the Sinfonietta Bel Canto will be hosting the Finalists Concert of its annual Concerto Competition for ...

Throughout this season Jörg Widman is composer-performer in residence at Wigmore Hall, so this is a good time to find out more about his music. The German composer’s own instrument is the clarinet, ...

Naxos’s valuable and ongoing Penderecki series here couples the Second Cello Concerto of 1982 and the Viola Concerto of 1983. Penderecki made his reputation in the late 1950s as a master of striking, ...

Few violists are born. Most have the instrument thrust upon them. In fact, the viola -- the overlooked stepchild of the orchestra’s string section -- is rarely studied as a first instrument at all.

Let’s not beat about the bush: it takes something to make Elgar’s Cello Concerto work on the viola, to make it convincing even in those moments where a transposition up into the viola’s higher ...

It’s late autumn — viola time. The viola should perhaps be the instrument of summer. Its tone suggests sumptuous ripeness from the top of its range to bottom. But falling between the violin’s soaring ...

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. The premiere of Brett Dean’s Hamlet at Glyndebourne in 2017 had a resonance beyond that initial production. The ...

What’s the difference between a viola and a trampoline? You take your shoes off to jump on a trampoline. Those damn viola jokes! Though usually good-natured and funny, they nonetheless belittle a ...

"People sometimes think playing the viola is boring," muses Teng Li, the newly appointed principal violist of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. "Traditionally, the viola has been considered a 'filler' ...

Walton composed his Violin Concerto in 1938 and 1939. Considering the agonisingly slow pace at which he habitually worked, it is perhaps an exaggeration to say that he was at the height of his ...