Sounded terrible how? Can you be more specific?
Well it was a couple of years ago, so it hard to be too specific. Partly because I lacked the critical framework at the time to fully understand why what I was writing was so terrible. I’ve been writing a lot about solo strings in these pages, In part because I’ve really put in enormous effort since then do better understand the these instruments and how to approach them.
And I was asking for advice here to presage going back and revisiting in the solo viola in terms of what I’ve learned since.
But I do recall in particular (as Corey says in his review) that the cross fade doesn’t work well. I seem to recall that it’s better on some notes that others, and that this viola is better than the violin.
But the cross fade isn‘t just limited, it’s in some cases completely broken. “4 violas playing out of tune” isn’t really that much of an exaggeration. Modern instrument wouldn’t ship with this kind of phasing. they would either do it better (spitfire, Chris Hein) or the would simply prevent crossfade from happening at all (Joshua Bell). But it’s an old instrument so perhaps this was the state of the art at the time.
think it may also have been that I was trying to play in a style that just wasn’t within, or even close to, the expressive space the instrument is designed for. I tend to really love using the crossfade and crafting the dynamics, for instance.
Again, I was totally clueless at the time. And at least some of these insults being thrown at inexperienced users (and in some sense even this “spitfire fanboy” invective, in that the spitfire approach does happen to align more easily with the expressive spaces I often tend to gravitate towards) , aren’t exactly wrong. If not exactly helpful either.
But debating whether this instrument ‘terrible’ vs ‘not terrible’ is equally unhelpful (and I’m partly guilty of this, so I will again apologize). In that it obscures the particular complexities of solo string instruments.
It this a ‘terrible’ instrument? I have no idea - though people who’s work I respect are arguing that there’s great things to be done with it and I’d like to understand that more.
Have I ever been able to make it sound not terrible - sadly no.
Very different questions of course.