The viola is the odd instrument out in an orchestra’s string section. It is not the diva violin, it is not the moody cello, and it is not the burly double bass. Musicians love to make fun of instruments they don’t play and those who do play them, but the viola joke literature is especially robust. A high school physics teacher who plays the much-maligned instrument in two regional orchestras maintains three webpages of viola insults (that have all been translated into Japanese). Here is one.
A violist came home and found his house burned to the ground. When he asked what happened, the police told him, “Well, apparently the conductor came to your house, and …” The violist’s eyes lit up, and he interrupted excitedly, “The conductor? Came to my house?”
This trend made it noteworthy, if not historic, that the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra entrusted a Live at the Sheldon program, in which two musicians pick the music and recruit colleagues to perform it with them, to not one but two violist curators. The April 30 Live at the Sheldon concert that concluded a lively season was curated by SLSO violists Chris Tantillo and Shannon Farrell Williams.
Due to the historic marginalization of the viola expressed in that arson joke – “The conductor? Came to myhouse?” – the curators had to rely extensively on new music to program a concert of music that featured two violas. They opened with three briefer pieces by living composers, one of whom was in the house to enjoy the world premiere of his composition.
I was having a hard time believing my eyes and ears when I saw the two curators take the stage alone to perform a viola duet, something I would not have guessed existed. It turns out Caroline Mallonee wrote Wavefield for the more believable pairing of viola and cello, though she was charitable enough to the less-glamorous instrument to adapt her score for two violas. Though I had some difficulty concentrating on the content of the music because of my shock to witness, for the first and probably last time, a viola duet, when I came to my senses, I noted: harmony, synchronicity, meditative, ruminative.
The world premiere of Nate Leslie’s Open Your Eyes, Now is the Time was brought to us by the New Music Initiative at Mizzou, funded by the Sinquefield Charitable Foundation. The curators were presented with work by a number of student composers and of them chose Leslie to write a piece for them to perform. The resulting commission had the urgency of youth, with as many frenetic crashes per capita as I have ever heard in a piece of classical music. The young composer compelled the string quartet to play with finale energy for the entire five minutes. Leslie told us this piece is about him becoming the person he wants to be, and it sounded like he was in a big hurry to get there.
The final two pieces in the first half were performed by a string quintet: the two violist curators, violinists Jessica Cheng Hellwege and Hannah Ji (celebrating her birthday), and a cellist. Melissa Brooks played cello on Organum Light by Bulgarian composer Dobrinka Tabakova, which sounded like Gregorian chant for strings. I suddenly realized what a silent, rapt, crowded house faced the stage. Bjorn Ranheim took the cello for Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Phantasy Quintet. I felt how curators who play an often-overlooked supporting instrument had chosen material with few solos and pervasive ensemble vibe and glory. I started thinking how we need more, not less, viola energy in 2026, a year of, at least on the political stage, rampant egotistical brinksmanship.
The program concluded with what the curators said was the one piece they instantly knew they had to perform, Johannes Brahms’ String Sextet No. 1 in B-flat. Here, my favorite composer became basically the first person to hit upon the bright idea of writing music for two violins, two cellos, and two violas, of all things, virtually setting the precedent of anyone treating the viola like a first-class citizen of the string section.
Listening to Brahms orchestrating music with all these pairs to play with, I kept thinking about the troubled world outside this beatific concert hall and all the things that this world needs that it is not getting. Brahms brimmed with melodies and harmonies, showing the perpetual urge to resolve, to come together, to make peace out of apparent differences. The musicians performed with evident ease, comfort, and delight this music that was never predictable, yet whose changes always felt inevitable after they had been resolved. It was music that made you think that happy endings were possible, but only after a lot of hard work.
Brahms denied himself any simple religious solution to the problems of existence, any promise of salvation provided by some higher power. He believed it was up to us to work it all out. Listening to this passionate performance of his invention of the string sextet, I thought of all the work that must be done and felt that this music might provide a template for getting it done.
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