Viola: The Unsung Hero

Original version

BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

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Viola: The Unsung Hero: The Rebel Viola

The Rebel Viola

BBC Radio 3 - Viola: The Unsung Hero, The Rebel Viola

Ruth Gibson explores the viola's unique voice and the repertoire written for it.

Violist Ruth Gibson stands up for her overlooked and underestimated instrument - its vocal qualities, its ability to represent human emotions and its unapologetic rebelliousness.

Violist Ruth Gibson explores her instrument's unique voice across three programmes full of intriguing musical choices. The viola may have less solo repertoire than its string siblings, the violin and the cello, and its awkward mid-range sound might be harder for listeners to hear, but Ruth believes it’s undoubtedly the unsung hero of orchestras and chamber ensembles. This butt of musical jokes has a long history of being overlooked, and Ruth will be encouraging it into the limelight at last.

Ruth believes that the viola is the rebel of the orchestra and in this third and final episode her musical choices have a revolutionary and subversive flavour. Ruth explores Mozart’s most forward-thinking viola writing, a sonata by Hindemith that encourages the viola to sound wild, and a piece by Berio where the viola’s role is to provoke and antagonise.

She admires the defiantly unique sounds and playing styles of violists including Kim Kashkashian, William Primrose and Tabea Zimmermann. She also shares music from Bach to Ligeti where the viola’s rebelliousness both defies expectations and breaks with tradition.

Plus, Stéphane Grappelli, the so-called grandfather of jazz violinists, displays his prowess on the violin’s slightly larger cousin…

A Tandem Production for BBC Radio 3

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

Music: Classical: Orchestral

Violist Ruth Gibson explores how composers write for the the unsung hero of the orchestra.

Violist Ruth Gibson explores how composers write for the the unsung hero of orchestras and chamber ensembles, discovering pieces that maximise its unique tonal qualities.

The viola is an acoustically imperfect instrument, built too small to achieve its full acoustic potential. For violist Ruth Gibson, this awkwardness coupled with the mournful sound that it often produces is part of the viola's appeal. It may have less solo repertoire than its string siblings, and its alto voice might find it harder to cut through dense textures, but Ruth believes that the viola is undoubtedly the unsung hero of orchestras and chamber ensembles.

Ruth will explore how composers write for the viola, discovering pieces that maximise its unique tonal qualities or play with its range (which happens to be close to that of the human voice). From its role in orchestras and string quartets to contemporary solo repertoire and film and TV scores, Ruth analyses the rich, dark, warm and nasal sounds of the viola and wonders why this butt of musical jokes has such a long history of being undeservedly overlooked.

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