“This music belongs both up there in the skies and down here with us,” Arad says. “Its eternal perfection and human drama are unseparated, and so are its profound sadness and unbound happiness.”

Arad remembers performing the Sinfonia Concertante—known for its warm expressiveness and engaging dialog between the violin and viola soloists—just one day after his mother passed away. “There was no better way for me to speak to her one last time,” he says.

In November of 2006 in Tel Aviv, Israel, Arad gave his two first performances of this composition, accompanied by the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music Symphony Orchestra, Zeev Dorman conducting. Arad explains that from the first stages of his work on this piece, he experienced a strong personal bond with the work. “Most fascinating to me in ‘Song of Praise’ is the composer’s considerable self-indulgence, a possible flaw in any other piece of music,” Arad says. “Himself a virtuoso violist, Pártos knew how to offer a full display of the instrument’s expressive and technical capabilities. His viola laments, laughs, sings, dances, runs, reflects, speaks. Indeed, for 35 minutes the viola is in the center of the universe.”

2 CLAUDINE BIGELOW

Claudine Bigelow is head of viola studies and chamber music coordinator at the Brigham Young University School of Music. She’s played in the viola section of major orchestras, performed around the world, and continues to be an active recitalist. She’s on the board of the American Viola Society and is president of the organization’s Utah chapter. Bigelow also coordinates the annual Primrose Memorial Concert.

“I am deeply touched by [Beethoven’s] music, how the voices interact with each other, and how all voices become inner voices at certain points,” Bigelow says. “[Beethoven’s viola] music can be the most intimate as well as the most extroverted of any I have ever played. With Beethoven’s chamber music we have an opportunity to express ourselves so completely.”

Bigelow suggests the David Concerto as an excellent piece for advanced students to learn while preparing for the Bartók Concerto, and says that the Bax Sonata has been overlooked as one of the staples of the viola repertoire, though “it should really be one of them.”

Bigelow would like to hear more people play the Benjamin. “Violists complain that we don’t have enough Romantic-period music for us,” she says. “This piece has the lyricism and sweep to be placed in that category.”

Pulse Aria/Achoo Lullaby is written for solo viola and CD (a percussion track using sounds from a newborn baby, such as a heartbeat, sneezes, and so on). “The music explores the inner life of a child and mother, their special relationship, and the rhythms of their lives together in a way I have never heard in music before,” Bigelow says.

3 HELEN CALLUS

International recording artist Helen Callus serves as associate professor of viola at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and is the president of the American Viola Society (the first woman elected to that title). She is also the viola forum editor for the American String Teachers Association Journal. Recently, Callus accepted the position of artistic director of the Centrum Chamber Music Festival. She has long championed the viola works of violist and composer Rebecca Clarke and such other 20th-century British composers such as Sir William Walton and York Bowen.

“[This] is my absolutely favorite piece,” Callus says. “It’s such amazing music.” Callus suggests the arrangement by legendary Russian violist Vadim Borisovsky. She recently recorded the work for the ASV label in Frankfurt, Germany (the CD is scheduled to be released in fall 2008).

Callus’ all-time favorite viola work doubles as a piece that she feels is often overlooked by violists. “It is well arranged for the viola by someone who knows how to write [and] arrange for the viola,” she says. “It is virtuosic of the highest order and incredibly beautiful—we really need something like this in the repertoire.”

“This is one of my all-time favorite pieces,” Chiang says. “It is a work that demands virtuosity, lyricism, and elegance. It also is one of the few pieces for viola in the Romantic French style.”

This is Chiang’s current favorite. “It is a beautiful piece in the classical style of Haydn and Mozart, with lovely melodic lines passed back and forth between violin and viola,” she says. “Violists need concertos! This is an effective work, and a wonderful complement to Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante.”

5 CAROL COOK

As a native of Scotland, Carol Cook won her first Scottish fiddle competition at age eight and went on to make her concerto debut at 16. She was recently a member of Mark O’Connor’s Grammy Award–winning Appalachia Waltz Trio (along with cellist Natalie Haas). Cook has performed with the New York Philharmonic, the London and Chicago Symphony Orchestra. She’s a member of the Lyric Opera Orchestra and the Metamorphosen Chamber Orchestra.

“I have to say that, forced into a decision on my favorite viola piece, it would have to be this Mozart work,” Cook says. “[The second movement theme] has to be one of the most beautiful viola lines ever written.”

“It is very lyrical and full of soulful, plaintive melodies as well as heartbreaking emotion,” Cook says. “It is very well written for the viola and I feel that you can just let the instrument sing as the registers he writes help create the colors needed.

“It is so well suited to viola and it is one of very few pieces that a violist can perform with a chamber orchestra.” Helen Callus has recorded the work (with the Walton Concerto).

“It is absolutely beautiful.”

But he adds that several pieces have resonated deeply with him. “[When] I first heard the opening theme of the Walton Viola Concerto, it affected me as a siren song. The Bax Sonata for Viola and Piano has remained one of my favorites—it’s also neglected, in my opinion.”

“Both works have a Hungarian flavor, of course,” Dalton says. He adds that they are colorfully orchestrated and accessible to the advanced student. Though not rigorously difficult, technically speaking, there are passages and pages that will challenge the player. “Audiences respond generously to these viola works that are colorful, tuneful, and often brilliant,” he says.

7 ROBERTO DÍAZ

Roberto Díaz is the new president of the Curtis Institute of Music. He is a professor of viola at the school and was previously principal violist of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Díaz was also principal violist of the National Symphony (under the direction of Mstislav Rostropovich), a member of the Boston Symphony (under Seiji Ozawa), and a member of the Minnesota Orchestra (with Sir Neville Marriner). He has received numerous awards, including prizes at the Naumburg and Munich international viola competitions.

Commissioned for Primrose by the Harvard Musical Association in 1961, this work is “really good music,” Díaz says of the piece he’s performed in recital and at the International Viola Congress. “It is always very well received.” He adds that it is almost 15 minutes in length and is wonderful for viola and piano. Díaz points out that although the piece is very difficult technically, it is really worth it.

“The most challenging and exciting music for me to play in recital these days is György Kurtág’s Signs, Games and Messages and György Ligeti’s Solo Sonata.

9 PAUL NEUBAUER

Paul Neubauer has performed as a soloist with more than 100 orchestras in the United States and Europe. He serves as orchestra and chamber-music director of the OK Mozart Festival. Neubauer was principal violist of New York Philharmonic for six years (joining at age 21 as the youngest principal string player in the philharmonic’s history) and received the Avery Fisher Career Grant in 1989. Neubauer is also an artist-member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and has been featured on CBS’s Sunday Morning and Garrison Keillor’s hit National Public Radio series A Prairie Home Companion.

“It’s a beautiful English romantic work that has a lot of pizzazz!” Neubauer says of this selection by the late British composer. “This work was a great favorite of its dedicatee, Lionel Tertis, as well as William Primrose.” According to Neubauer, this romance was featured in numerous performances and recordings by both of these great artists. “I contacted the publisher of the romance in search of the orchestral parts,” Neubauer says, “and I was informed that a Mr. William Primrose took out the parts in 1942 and never returned them!”

10 GERALDINE WALTHER

Since 2005, Geraldine Walther has served as the violist of the Takács String Quartet. Before then, she had been principal violist of the San Francisco Symphony for 29 years. She had also been assistant principal of the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Miami Philharmonic, and the Baltimore Symphony, and she served as principal violist with the Mainly Mozart Festival in San Diego. In 1995, Walther was selected by Sir Georg Solti as a member of his Musicians of the World.

“It’s really hard to choose one piece from all the beautiful, evocative, and endlessly different pieces written for the viola,” she says.

Walther would like to hear more violists include these three beautiful gamba sonatas in their programs. “They are technically challenging because of the nonstop nature of the writing,” she says.

Walther feels that these three pieces can teach a lot to violists. “It’s just such beautiful music! They sound like they were written for the instrument, especially when you play them with harpsichord so that you aren’t having to produce a big sound all the time and you can lighten up.”

“I spent many years at IU as Atar’s student and teaching assistant, so I got to know him and his music making well,” Watras says. “Many people know Atar as a fabulous viola soloist and chamber musician. He’s also a terrific composer.”

Watras believes this piece is a significant contribution to the viola literature. “I was lucky enough to study the piece with [Arad], and record it for my first CD, so it’s a very special piece for me.”

“I find it to be a very charming piece that probably doesn’t get the respect that it deserves,” Watras says. “The music of many of the historic violin virtuosi-composers is often passed off as physical exercise, rather than beautiful music. Vieuxtemps writes with passion, charm, grace, and beautiful bel can to lines.”

Watras especially loves the barcarolle movement, which reminds her of the Offen-bach opera Tales of Hoffman. “It lays well on the viola,” she says, adding that the work is virtuosic and satisfying to perform. “It’s not heard that often in concert, so it’s fresh, while still being familiar to an audience’s ears.”