Roger Benedict makes a serious case for viola

WITH violists being the butt of so many musical jokes and so few standout solo pieces for their instrument, Roger Benedict’s new album comes as a special treat.

Roger Benedict has recorded an album of works by Schubert and Schumann. Picture: Danielle Butters

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VIOLISTS are the butt of many musical jokes: What do you call someone who hangs around with musicians? How do you keep a violin from being stolen? Put it in a viola case.

But Bach, Beethoven and Britten all played the instrument — and that’s just the Bs, we haven’t got to Haydn, Mozart or Schubert yet. And even the consummate fiddler Paganini fell in love with a Strad viola and considered making it his primary instrument, according to the Viola.com website.

But solo works for the instrument are pretty rare compared with its more glamorous cousin the violin. In the concert hall you might see a performance of Berlioz’s Harold in Italy or Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante, albeit it sharing the limelight with a violin, or if you’re lucky one of the less obscure concertos from 20th century composers who took up the instrument.

So Sydney Symphony Orchestra principal Roger Benedict’s new ABC Classics disc A Winter’s Tale with the dynamic pianist Simon Tedeschi is a treat indeed, especially as the English born violist performs a cracking arrangement of Schubert’s Arpeggione Sonata — a work bursting with too many wonderful tunes to be confined to its more conventional pairing of cello and piano. It was originally conceived for a six-string cello hybrid with frets, an instrument which was rapidly consigned to the musical graveyard.

A Winter's Tale features violist Roger Benedict and pianist Simon Tedeschi.

What we lose in low-down yearning grunt of the cello is made up for in Benedict’s tonal beauty and deft phrasing, and although inevitably the three movements have a lighter feel, there’s nothing wrong with that. This version will sit happily alongside my treasured recording by cello maestro Mstislav Rostropovich and Benjamin Britten from the early 1960s.

Schubert’s wonderful knack for melody extended to his songs — there are more than 600 of them — and Benedict and Tedeschi turn their attention to his greatest lieder cycle of all, Winterreise, giving us eight of the 24 songs of lost love and psychological disintegration.

This is a less successful transition, despite Benedict’s sympathetic arrangements, for without the words and the singer’s nuance and interpretation of them we’re left with a pale comparison. Tedeschi’s accompaniment is as immaculate as ever.

Sydney pianist Simon Tedeschi lends some immaculate accompaniment.

No loss in translation with the two works by Schumann which close this lovely collection. Both the intermezzo from the F.A.E. Sonata and the A minor Op 105 sonata were composed for violin, but as Benedict says both “slip comfortably into viola clothing”.

A Winter’s Tale is available at the ABC Shop for $22.99.