For his debut song disc, baritone Julien Van Mellaerts honours his heritage with a selection of New Zealand, British, and French song, recorded with pianist James Baillieu. "I wanted to share where I feel connected to and explore the idea of home and identity through song. Having grown up knowing I was from many places, I feel a strong connection to the protagonist in Vaughan Williams / R. L. Stevenson’s Songs of Travel. I am lucky to call so many beautiful places home, and ultimately, that’s how we settled on the title, Songs of Travel and Home.” — Julien Van Mellaerts.

The new album "Lady Viola" presents various viola repertoire performed by Czech eminent violist Kristina Fialová. Pieces on this release include by Rebecca Clarke, Sylvie Bodorová, Lillian Fuchs and more. Fantasia for Solo Viola by Sláva Vorlová is world premiere recording.Kristina Fialová has been primarily praised by the critics for her impeccable technique, impassioned performance and sophisticated musical sentiment. After winning the Michal Spisak International Competition in Katowice, Poland, she was invited to the major concert stages around the world. Her appearance at the prestigious Tivoli Festival in Denmark was followed by her debuting in Tonhalle Zürich, Cologne philharmonic hall, Sumida Triphony hall in Tokio, Gran Teatro Nacional in Lima and giving a recital at the Prague Spring festival.

For two consecutive years listeners to Classic FM have voted Max Bruch’s First Violin Concerto their favourite among 300 classical works. His melodies have instant appeal and it is good to see three comparative rarities on this disc. Bruch loved alto-register instruments such as the clarinet and viola, and he wrote these works in 1911 when giant leaps were taking place in the development of music, all of which he eschewed in favour of mid-19th-century Romanticism. While the clarinet rides orchestral accompaniment with no difficulty, the viola sits right in the middle and can be drowned (a hazard in performing the Double Concerto but avoided in the recording studio). The viola Romance is a gem, while the Eight Pieces are colourful and varied. All the performers do ample justice to this beautiful and unashamedly Romantic music.

The Klingler Quartet was regarded as the best string quartet of its times and as the rightful heir to the legendary Joachim Quartet. Karl Klingler, the musician who gave his name to the quartet, had studied with Brahms' friend Joseph Joachim and had joined his teacher's quartet as a young violist. MDG's sleuths have now found two remarkable historical documents in the archives of the Bavarian Radio that show us Klingler as a composer and as an interpreter: his Violin Concerto with Ulf Hoelscher and the Berlin Philharmonic under Volker Schmidt-Gertenbach and the Viola Sonata performed by the composer himself along with Michael Raucheisen at the piano.

The viola is no longer the Cinderella of string instruments, thanks to such composers as Hindemith, Schnittke, Britten and Berio, but it was Walton who, in 1927, composed the first significant work for the viola since Berlioz’s Harold in Italy of 1834. Max Bruch also wrote for it; like Mozart’s Sinfonia concertante for violin/viola duo, he composed a concerto for viola and clarinet in 1911, with an alternative version substituting violin for clarinet. A short Romance had appeared in 1885, while Kol nidrei for cello also had a version for viola. All these works appear on this excellent disc and highlight the instrument’s strengths and weaknesses in the capable hands of Bashmet, currently one of its greatest exponents.

Vol. 3 of Lawrence Power's survey of the complete Hindemith work for viola features a cluster of works written for viola and orchestra in the short time between 1927 and 1930. Though Hindemith did not write a traditional concerto in the classical sense, the Op. 48 Konzertmusik, Kammermusik No. 5, and Der Schwanendreher each put the viola's abilities at the forefront of the orchestra. His personal knowledge of the instrument's technical, lyrical, and emotive abilities become quickly apparent as the viola is made to scurry around as nimbly as a violin in Konzertmusik, as emotionally rich as a cello in Trauermusik, or as colorful and evocative as a piano in Der Schwanendreher. All of these many moods are captured effortlessly by Power. His playing balances the clarity needed to execute agile passagework with the richness and depth needed for more lyrical sections. What's more, Power never gives the appearance of trying to make the viola sound like a violin; instead, he celebrates the viola's idiosyncrasies and transforms them into a rich, satisfying tapestry of sound. Joined by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under David Atherton, Vol. 3 of Power's hefty undertaking is just as worthwhile and engaging as the previous two and is certainly worth checking out.

Viola Space in Tokyo is one of the world’s most important musical festivals dedicated to the viola and the music composed for it. Founded by Nobuko Imai – well-known to BIS followers as well as to lovers of the viola – it celebrates its 10th anniversary, and BIS was invited to document some of the 150 works that have been performed over the years. The program spans over more than 70 years, and the list of composer includes Schnittke, Per Nørgård, Penderecki and Oedoen Partos. Nobuko Imai herself performs two of the most exciting works on the two discs: György Ligeti’s Sonata for Viola Solo and Toshio Hosokawa’s Voyage VI for Viola and Strings. This last piece was composed only last year, and is dedicated Nobuko Imai. It forms part of a series of concertos “in which the soloist symbolizes man while the ensemble represents the universe, nature and world that surrounds us within and without”, in the composer’s own description. Among these a modern classic such as György Kurtág’s Hommage à R. Sch. – in which violist Junji Suganuma is joined by a clarinet and a piano – may be mentioned, as well as Viola, Viola, a constantly surprising duo by George Benjamin.

Maxim Rysanov completes his survey of all Brahms s chamber works to feature the viola. On this second volume, he is joined by Alice Coote and Ashley Wass in the Two Songs op.91, and takes the solo viola part the clarinet role in the Op.115 Quintet. Richard Mühlfeld, the clarinetist for whom Brahms wrote his two sonatas and the quintet, managed to coax Brahms out of self-imposed retirement, and the result is the wonderful Indian summer of late chamber works. Joseph Joachim remarked that the clarinet parts would work well transcribed for viola. Brahms lavished much care on these arrangements, and they are valuable additions to the repertoire of the viola.

Nobuko Imai has been a leading viola player since the early 1990s. She studied at Tokyo's Toho Gakuen Music School before continuing her training in the United States at both Yale University and the Juilliard School. Following her graduation from Juilliard, she triumphantly vanquished all competitors to win the highest prizes at the Munich and Geneva international competitions. She is a former member of the prestigious Vermeer Quartet, known for sharp performances of the Mozart and Beethoven chamber repertoire.

Music publisher, friend, benefactor to Mozart, and respected composer Franz Anton Hoffmeister was a significant figure in late eighteenth century Vienna; his star did not fade until well into the nineteenth century, when he was eventually disparaged as a mediocrity. Yet Hoffmeister could have no better advocates than violist Ashan Pillai and conductor Christopher Hogwood, who have restored some of this composer's reputation in a delightful album of his complete works for viola. Pillai's idiomatic and sensitive solos and Hogwood's fastidious direction of the Gulbenkian Orchestra elevate the music to a high level of elegance and charm, and it becomes apparent from these performances that Hoffmeister was much better than his detractors claimed.

Tabea Zimmermann and Kirill Gerstein return to the studio to record the follow-up to their highly praised first duo album. The new disc includes spellbinding performances of three late works by significant 19th century composers: Brahms mature Sonata in F minor, Schubert s melancholic Arpeggione Sonata, and Franck s splendid Sonata in A major, all masterly performed on viola.

This disc strikes me as an ideal introduction to the music of Turkey’s greatest composer. Ahmed Adnan Saygun’s style might be described as “Szymanowski with a primal rhythmic feel.” If you love the composer’s First Violin Concerto then you will find here a very similar exoticism, nocturnal atmosphere, and love of voluptuous textures. The harmonic style is intensely chromatic, but also highly melodic. Like Bartók in his last period, Saygun’s handling of tonality mellowed toward the end of his life, which makes the Cello Concerto more consonant than the Viola Concerto, but both works are absolutely gorgeous and masterpieces of their kind. It’s positively criminal that no one plays these pieces regularly in concert. The performances here are excellent. Tim Hugh is a well-known cellist, and he pours on the tone with all of the rhapsodic abandon that Saygun requires. Mirjam Tschopp also is a superb violist, with a big, beefy tone that never gets swamped by the intricate orchestration. It’s also very rewarding to hear a Turkish orchestra in this music–and to find that it plays beautifully under Howard Griffiths.

Yury Markovich Kramarov (1929-1982), one of the best representatives of St. Petersburg viola school, the outstanding Russian musician and teacher, has contributed a great deal to the development of the national viola art. In 1952 Kramarov, still a student at the Conservatoire then, was invited to fill the post of the viola group concertmaster of the Leningrad Philharmonic Society orchestra. Simultaneously he started teaching at the Conservatoire. From that time on performing and pedagogical arts were constantly present in his creative life and complemented each other. From 1956 through 1963 he was the viola group concertmaster in the famous Mravinsky Orchestra. In 1957 the young musician won two important and convincing prizes at the All-Union and International competitions in Moscow. Being a brilliant soloist, having performed with best national orchestras and conductors (Ye. Mravinsky, N. Rakhlin, A. Yansons, K. Eliasberg), Kramarov nonetheless was always drawn towards chamber music. Such leading figures of the Russian performing arts as I. Braudo, M. Vaiman, B. Gutnikov, V. Liberman, M.Rostropovich played together with Kramarov. The musician performed with great enthusiasm in the quartets named after Taneev, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Glazunov.

Wolfram Christ can be a boring performer (witness a deadpan Berlioz Harold in Italy with Maazel), but these works seem to suit him perfectly. The J.C. Bach Concerto (is *that* really J.C. Bach???) is quite splashy, especially witness the final movement. It's very exciting, and definitely worth exploring, with a tuneful first movement, and a lovely second. The first theme of I comes back to haunt in III, making it a "cyclical" work.

For many years there have been rumours that Pinchas Zukerman, one of the world's outstanding viola players in addition to being a supreme violin virtuoso, would match Sir Yehudi Menuhin's feat of recording both these Walton concertos as he did for EMI. In the event Nigel Kennedy has neatly stepped in, and—with the uniquely expert guidance of Andre Previn—produced a recording of both works which in this coupling is unlikely to be bettered for a long time. Even next to the finest individual recordings of the two works, differently coupled, Kennedy provides formidable competition.