An Interview with Roberto Diaz
by Charles Noble

Roberto Diaz is one of the foremost players and teachers of the viola in the world today. Though still only in his forties, his career has included section posts with the Minnesota Orchestra and the Boston Symphony, Principal viola with the National Symphony and his present position of Principal viola of the Philadelphia Orchestra. His teaching posts have included the University of Maryland, Peabody Conservatory, Rice University, and the Curtis Institute. He is the product of a musical family – his mother Pauline was a pianist, his father Manuel is a violinist and violist, his brother Andrés is a prize-winning concert cellist, and his youngest sister Gabriela is a violinist in the early stages of her career. Roberto’s varied (and full) schedule includes his duties with the Philadelphia Orchestra (which include a solo turn with the orchestra each season), teaching at the Curtis Institute, solo recitals, concerts with the Díaz Trio, and master classes around the world. In the fall of 2002 I sat down with Roberto in dressing room ‘B’ at Verizon Hall in Philadelphia to ask him about his life and career in music – the following is a portrait of his life in his own words.

Photo - Dwight Pounds

Family life – My family was pretty musical: my father was a violinist and violist, my mother a pianist. They insisted upon at least a basic musical education for all of us, and three out of four of us have stayed in music. I started violin with my father in Chilé, but soccer was my predominant occupation. My brother Andrés, on the other hand, was glued to the cello. I had no chemistry with the violin and never progressed much in my first 4 or 5 years. We moved to the US in 1973, just outside of Atlanta, Georgia. Soccer in the U.S. was a great disappointment to me, people just ran around in clumps chasing the ball! They just didn’t know how the game was really played. Gradually my focus shifted from soccer to the viola; my father decided that I should switch from the violin in the hopes that I would take more of an interest in my musical studies. At the same time I had a real interest in architecture and design. I graduated from high school a year early, and rather than go on to conservatory, where I had been already accepted, my father urged me to stay in Atlanta for one more year [the tragic death of Roberto’s mother Pauline in an bicycling accident not long before was also a factor] and I enrolled in a college in the area and studied industrial design, earning a certificate. The following year I went to Boston to study at the New England Conservatory.

His father, Manuel Díaz – There’s no substitute for what you learn at home. It’s amazing what a role model my father’s been. Sometimes I think to myself, “if I could only learn to be as patient, as understanding, as level-headed, as tough in the face of adversity [as him].” I know that no matter what, no matter when, I can call home, no matter what he’s doing he’s going to be there for me. I still refer to my parent’s house as “home.” Now that I’m married, Elissa and I talk about everything, but the influence that he has on me is undeniable; I just think “I know what he would do, I’ve just got to stay cool.” I saw him be a father to Gabriela, my youngest sister, it was amazing to watch that because I was actually conscious at that time of what it was that he was doing and how he was doing it. When the other three of us were growing up and were all in the middle of it, and there were fists flying and feet flying and words flying, you weren’t aware of how he was handling it. But with Gabriela, he would take a situation and resolve or dissolve conflict. It’s good to have a good buddy who can do that.

Burton Fine – I couldn’t have asked for a better person [as a teacher] at the time. He was organized and meticulous. We did one or two etudes a week for all four years I studied with him. We covered every possible etude book: some famous, some very obscure. He demanded very organized playing, especially regarding intonation: “I don’t recognize this” was his constant statement about my playing.“Go home and get it in tune and really work on it. It has to be honest.” I was a wild player in those days, I played the Bartók Concerto and the Ravel Tzigane for my placement audition when I got to NEC. He would say to me “Just because you’ve got Primrose’s recording in your head doesn’t mean that you sound like Primrose.” To this day I still fly to Boston occasionally to play for Burton before I play an important concert. When I was preparing the Walton Concerto for the Philadelphia Orchestra, I went to Boston to play for Burton, because he hears things differently than other people do. He is so demanding in “picky” ways. Burton was instrumental in preparing me for a career in orchestras. From my very first year with him he started working with me on orchestral excerpts, years and years before I ever even considered taking an audition. By the time I graduated I’d covered just about any piece that you could expect to run into at an audition. He demanded that you know the context of each excerpt, why it has to be played a certain way, who you had to pay attention to while you were playing a passage. For example, does the accompaniment allow you freedom, or do you need to keep it in a very strict tempo? We used them like exercises every week. He knew the repertoire better than anyone I’ve talked with about that stuff. I probably didn’t realize it at the time, but it was a big advantage for me to be that prepared that way. When it came time for me to play Don Juan at an audition, I’d been playing Don Juan for four years, but without every having to be under the pressure of having to learn it for an audition next week. It made such a big difference. As a player, Burton is so unassuming; he’s not as flamboyant in his ability as say, [Joe] dePasquale. But there would be lessons where we’d be working on a Paganini Caprice, and he would say “don’t make me do this!” and then he’d just grab my viola and play a Paganini Caprice that would leave me stunned, and he’d be doing it on my viola! He would just rip through a passage, and then say “I can’t play this stuff” and you’d be left thinking, I didn’t know this was possible! [Many of Roberto’s present and former pupils might remember similar incidents in their own lessons.]

Louis Krasner - Krasner was an amazing influence, but I was too young and unaware of who he was to take advantage of him the way I needed to while I was actually at NEC. I came back to Krasner after I’d studied two years at the Curtis Institute and played in the Minnesota Orchestra for a year. I then returned to Boston to join the Boston Symphony, which I played in for five years; it was during this time that I studied with Krasner. I played for him once a month or every three weeks. Lessons were completely unlike those that I had with Burton or with DePasquale. He would say ‘why are you doing it this way?” Some of the hardest facts to face were those questions that Krasner would raise in his lessons. He would say, “You play the viola as well as people play the viola, but after five minutes I know how you play, and what you’re going to do, and frankly I’d rather go home and watch television.” What do you do when you’re faced with that? He made me realize that there’s so much more to viola performance than playing music fast and in tune and with a nice sound. That, actually, was a completely different outlook than I had had before. I think of those lessons to this day. He was just an amazing person. Sometimes we would have a lesson where we would never even take out the instrument. He would bring an article from the New York Times or a review from the Times, and he would say “Okay, if this [reviewer] reacted to a concert this way, describe what the concert sounded like to me in your own words.” And you’d have to start thinking, what would this person have sounded like for the reviewer to use these words to describe them? There were many musical questions which were dissected in minute detail, such as “Why is it piano here?” or “Why is it slurred here at this dynamic level, when it’s another way in another place in the piece?” These questions led you to ask why the composer wrote it this way, and what are the implications? Knowing the musical implications of every bar is important when learning a piece like the Bartók Concerto. If you understand how a piece is written, how a piece is put together, why things happen, it makes a huge difference in how you approach it technically. The impact of a phrase, knowing when you can take time and when you can’t, affects what fingerings and bowings you can use. When you try to make the music fit within the technical difficulties of the piece, it can get very difficult for both the performer and the listener. I’m sure that Burton talked about these things in one way or another, but it just went in one ear and out the other. Even with Krasner the same thing happened. You learn when you’re ready to learn; as with a lot of other people, it just didn’t happen all at once for me. I studied with Krasner at just the right time, working as a professional, trying to improve on things. I had a good job, but I needed to get other aspects of my playing and music-making caught up to my technical abilities on the instrument.

Competitions – The three competitions that I did [Washington International, Munich (ARD), and Naumberg], I did after I was already a member of the Boston Symphony. For me the best thing was that I was practicing like a maniac while I was in the orchestra. It was a great experience every time, even though I didn’t always come out the top prizewinner. But there was so much to learn from the experiences. I remember after the Naumberg finals, in which I was given the third prize. This was a surprise to me, since I didn’t think that I played worth anything in that round, not even honorable mention! The problem in the final round was strictly musical, and I knew it. Bobby Mann came up to me and asked me “Hasn’t anyone said anything to you about music?” I know why he said it. It was hard to hear, but it made my work with Louis Krasner certainly more urgent. I knew that the music just wasn’t coming out, it wasn’t ‘going’ anywhere. When people react that way to your playing, it really makes you reevaluate the “state of the union,” so to speak.

The Munich competition was a very different experience for me. That year there was no first prize given, only a second and a third prize. I got the third prize. I went to the competition with an instrument that was not what it should have been, it was the instrument that I played through high school with, and that was all I had at the time. I wasn’t educated in the fine points of owning a great instrument, and I figured that this viola got me this far, so there I went. I remember talking to Kim Kashkashian after the competition and she said, “You know, your instrument killed you.” As a result of that I was given a viola at the end of the competition. It blew my mind, it was better than winning the lottery! The jury unanimously decided by merit, and certainly by need, that I was the one that should get the instrument. It was donated to the competition that day, and was owned by the principal of the Munich Philharmonic in the 1930’s. It was a wonderful small instrument, but impossible for me to play. It was reassuring to be told that if I had a better instrument, I would have probably done much better. The music-making was much better than at Naumberg, but the nuances just weren’t making it past the instrument.

I did the Young Concert Artists auditions, and I was in the finals, and I had the same cheap viola that I used for Munich and Naumberg. The viola judge, who I won’t name, was extremely insulted that someone from the BSO would show up and represent himself with a cigar box of that magnitude. He took it very personally that someone would not care enough to get a better instrument for the competition.

One of the lessons these experiences taught me was that if you have a fine instrument you can spare, you should lend it out. Later on, I lent my Landolfi viola to Cathy Basrak, who did very well in the Munich Competition on that viola [she in fact won first prize]. So, now that I have more than one instrument, I certainly try to lend them out as much as I can. It allows you to do something for someone who needs help. These instruments are very expensive and you can’t just expect everybody to have one, you know? I’ve been told that ‘you just can’t play here on this lousy instrument’, and I know what that feels like, and I can try to prevent that for a few people.

Joseph dePasquale – Burton said to me ‘you should go study with Joe, and watch him play. Just watch him play, and imitate what he does as much as you can. There’s a lot to learn from that. At this point you are at a place where you can emulate someone at the level, the finer points.’ It was the best way to learn from Joe. You would go to lessons and play something for him, and he’d go “No, play it like this” and you’d do your best to do it the way he did. You have to have a lot of reserve to be able to do that. If you’re set up well technically, you can learn a lot that way. Burton was able to demonstrate incredible things in lessons, but the attitude from Joe during the demonstration was completely different – here is the way this is played, the only way. He really challenged you to play the way he played. He wanted a bigger sound, total virtuosity, to “wow” the audience. There was a “big stage presence” attitude to how you present yourself. Having worked with both Joe and Burton was great because the combination of their approaches really worked in developing my playing. I’m glad that I worked with them in the order that I did. Burton really laid a solid foundation upon which I could build other aspects of my playing with Joe. Interestingly, I was never able to play with the Philadelphia Orchestra when I was a student at Curtis because I was substituting with the Boston Symphony at that time. The few times I got a call from Philly I had to turn down the work because I was already committed to Boston. I think that was a bit of a sore point with Joe. So the first time I played with the Philadelphia Orchestra was as Principal Viola!

Minnesota Orchestra – During my second year at Curtis, I won the position with the Minnesota Orchestra. I was there just that one year. At the end of that year I auditioned for the BSO and was offered that position. It was one of Neville Marriner’s last two years with the Minnesota Orchestra. He was great, very nice, and very supportive of me. After a couple of months I was called into his office. I thought, “Oh my God, what is happening? I’ve lost my job, he’s going to fire me!” So I walked into his office, my first time in his office and it was very intimidating, and he says “Can I give you some advice?” I said certainly, and he said “Get out of here as quickly as you can. Listen to what I’m telling you, leave as soon as you can.” There’s so much luck involved in winning auditions that there was no certainty that I would be able to leave, but as luck would have it I won the BSO job at the close of the season. I spent one year in the Minnesota Orchestra. Then I went to Boston.

Boston Symphony – It was like coming home; I knew the orchestra, I’d subbed with them for several years. I loved going to Tanglewood. I got to live in Boston, but not as a student, so I could afford a car and a stereo! The experience was great. They had a rotation system where the last chair player moved up whenever there was a vacancy, and so I sat with everyone in the section, including Burton on the first stand. I loved it, it was great. The years in Boston and the year in Minnesota were really invaluable for my first principal position in the National Symphony.

National Symphony – There started my experiences with Slava [Rostropovich]. Any body who knows Slava knows he’s like a tornado, a force of nature. We played some concerts where it was absolutely like he was possessed. It was never refined, like the BSO under Haitink; it was making music in some of the most primitive ways, so brutal, complete devastation. Some of the Shostakovich symphonies we played, or Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet—thinking about those performances raise goose bumps on me to this day. It was vintage Slava. It was power, a natural force that I never felt from a conductor before. At the same time, when I got to the orchestra, he had a very unfortunate relationship with the viola section. He described it as his “Achilles Heel” in the orchestra. He described it on many occasions as an embarrassment to the orchestra. The thing is, the viola section was a really good bunch of people. Slowly, it just got turned around, and people got to trusting each other a little more. Playing with someone else in the section was key. It didn’t matter who so long as you played with someone else in the section. It was to your benefit as well as to the section’s benefit. After a few years it really turned around. I remember the first time Slava asked the first violin section to play something like the viola section, and the orchestra was just in complete disbelief. It really became a really wonderful section. People really put a lot of pride in the level of performance that they achieved. And Slava completely changed his opinion of the viola section, which was a great source of pride for us. We became an example of how to do things as a section. After several years in Washington, I had to make a decision -- is this where I want to spend the rest of my life, or do I want to explore some other options? There was a clumsy exchange with the personnel manager where I expressed my desire to never play a Pops concert again in my life, and he responded with “That choice is not yours to make.” Ultimately, I decided that I did have a choice. And so I decided to leave the orchestra. Slava was leaving, I wasn’t married, all my obligations came to paying rent and making a viola payment. Because of the competitions I’d done, I had some outside engagements, and I was doing a little teaching at both the University of Maryland and the Peabody Conservatory. I talked to my manager, and she felt that if there was ever a time to try, now was the time to do it. I talked to my dad, and he said at the very least I could come and live at home. That was comforting, having a place to go. So, I turned in a letter of resignation the next day, with a PS saying that I requested leave without pay for the remainder of the Pops concerts for that season. I think they thought it was an impulsive crazy thing by some kid, but then they realized that I was serious. At first some of my colleagues thought I was insane. Later, a lot of them said, “I wish I could do that.” And so I did it, and I’ve never looked back. Career-wise, it was one of the best things I ever did: leaving a good, secure position. So I was a free agent, for just a few years I hoped. And then came the phone call from the Philadelphia Orchestra, asking me if I’d audition for the principal viola position.

Philadelphia Orchestra – I knew that if I went back into the orchestra business, it would be for a position like principal of the Philadelphia Orchestra. I wasn’t sure if it would be open within my lifetime, since Joe [dePasquale] is so strong, and had many years ahead of him physically and as a player. The announcement came sooner than I’d expected. My first answer was thank you, but no thank you. And so I didn’t take part in that first audition. They went ahead and had auditions, with many fine players, and they didn’t choose anyone. A few months later I received another phone call. Would I agree to meet with Maestro Sawallisch to play some chamber music, sonatas, and talk a little bit? After the first audition, Sawallisch contacted Issac Stern to ask about people that he should contact about filling the chair, and that’s how Sawallisch came to call me at that point. So we agreed on the condition that it was clear that I had no interest in the job. We met, and the Maestro is a very persuasive man, and it eventually led to me being offered the position. From the second that I met Sawallisch, I was blown away by him in every possible way: as a musician, as a person, and in any other way you can imagine. My admiration for him grew exponentially as I really got to know him. I’m completely impressed with his knowledge of all things with his music and his way of dealing with me, it was just a fantastic experience from the very beginning. For him and the orchestra to know that I wasn’t really looking for a job, and that I had just left a similar job with the NSO, made it so that my coming here was much more on my terms. I had things that I’d already agreed to do, teaching at Rice and Peabody, playing with the Trio; I’d worked so hard for those things and didn’t want to give them up. It was a situation where, by the end of the meeting, we came to the understanding that if it were done in a certain way, it would be crazy for me to pass up this opportunity. When I played for the audition committee it was behind a screen; no one in the orchestra even knew that I was to be there, and I won the job.

Philadelphia Orchestra violas -- My attitude about playing or about the viola section – and I think we’ve really achieved this here in Philadelphia – is that you can have a real superstar section. Conductors come here to work with the orchestra, and they pretty unanimously say that the viola section is unequaled. It’s a section with a lot of players who are very much in demand for high-profile outside events – the Marlboro tour and the best festivals all around the world. It’s a very active section in that respect, more than any of the other sections in the orchestra. Violists from this orchestra are going all over the globe playing and touring, and it’s really great because it gives the section a special ‘feel.’ That really comes from the fact that it is made up of viola players who have this attitude that you will notice the viola section, the viola line. If you are going to hear the melody line all the time, and the bass line all the time, you’re sure as hell going to hear the viola line too! We’re not always going to hide in the background. We play just at the edge of “too much.” It’s what holds the string section together. If you don’t hear the violas in an orchestra, there’s a certain color that’s missing. It’s like with some of the great string quartets – with the greatest quartet violists like Michael Tree or Larry Dutton you hear the viola all the time, you have to, or there’s actually something missing. That’s what we try for with the viola section here in Philadelphia. Conductors seem to really appreciate it here. They might not specifically ask for it, but when they get it they don’t seem to mind. There’s definitely a certain leadership position that the viola section has taken in this orchestra, not just artistically, but in the way it functions. With rotations, for example, the depth of talent is such that anybody is able to sit anywhere, so we don’t have any of the pettiness that “this is my chair” or “I won’t sit behind so-and-so.” They’re all good enough to sit in the first stand, and they do! We get complaints from other sections about ‘why is so-and-so sitting on the first stand?’ Why shouldn’t they? Should there be an artistic problem with them sitting on the first stand? There isn’t, there just isn’t. So, it’s a great situation, and they make my job easy. I don’t have to do anything!

Teaching – I think that there’s a responsibility to teach, to keep the art form alive. Somebody has to take over where you leave off, to take the ball and run with it. I was fortunate to have several good teachers, enough that I became aware of what is possible in teaching. The kind of influence that my teachers had on me is certainly a great thing, but it is also kind of a scary responsibility. If you don’t watch yourself, you can really harm somebody in many ways. It’s a big challenge and a big responsibility, while at the same time it’s fantastic -- especially with the kids at Curtis, with the talent that they have. It is kind of amazing to get them to play better than they already do! It takes a certain commitment, but it’s very exciting at the same time. It’s not a job that you dread going to.

My first teaching job was actually when I was with the Boston Symphony, I taught for a couple of years at the Boston Conservatory. When I joined the National Symphony, I was asked to teach at the University of Maryland, College Park. Some time later, when I played a performance of Harold in Italy with the NSO, a very nice lady and man came backstage after the concert. It turns out they were the Dean and Director of the Peabody Conservatory, and they asked me if I was interested in coming to look at the school and maybe do some teaching there part-time. So then, while I was in the NSO, I was teaching both at College Park and Peabody. In the second year after I had left the NSO, I got a call from one of the violin teachers at Rice University in Houston. They said that Rice was looking for a full-time viola teacher, a tenure-track position, and so on. Would I be interested in applying? A few months later I did a college interview, talked to the dean, the faculty, taught lessons, did a recital and chamber music coaching. They analyzed all that, and then offered me a position. Just a few months later, the call from Maestro Sawallisch came, and so I went to Rice knowing that I was only going to be there for one year. On top of that, I had a full teaching load at Peabody. It was a crazy time! Then, a few years ago, after joining the Philadephia Orchestra, I started my teaching duties at the Curtis Institute. That’s a relatively small load compared to other schools because of the small number of students.

When you teach, the most important thing is to get people to think for themselves. You get them to listen to themselves. Krasner said, “You have to teach people to teach themselves.” Do you learn to trust your ear and your instinct? Do you know the difference between what you want to sound like and what you actually sound like, that comes directly from the “Burton” days - this, as well as how to get from Point A to Point B [to bring your performance to the level that you want to sound like]. In some ways it’s very easy, in some ways it’s very difficult. You have to teach people to use a process of elimination, so that they can learn to trust how to work through problems. The idea of teaching is to get people to think, not to just play. It’s not so hard to take the instrument out and just play at it for four hours a day, but are you really getting anything out of that time? You want to prepare them so that when they leave school and they’re on their own, you don’t want to have them say “Now what am I going to do?,” “How am I going to choose a fingering?,” because their teacher just said “Here’s what I do, now just do it.” Also, one size does not fit all; some people are more resilient, you can beat up on them more than others. Others, you must be very optimistic with them. The approach has to suit the temperament of the student.

Diaz Trio – the trio was something that my brother and I cooked up. I was in the BSO at the time, he was living in Boston, probably just out of school. It became a trio out of necessity – we didn’t have time to rehearse the way you had to rehearse a string quartet. We thought we could do chamber music at a really high level, but without quite the commitment of time that a quartet would require. Also, what was appealing was that the basic mindset of the string trio is very different than the string quartet. The quartet is sort of an “all for one” frame of mind, whereas the trio is more suited to three, more individual players that play very well together. Also, the ability to turn it into a quartet with another instrument - piano, flute, guitar - had more possibilities without having to leave someone else out. The group sort of took off, for many years we played with our first violinist, a fine violinist from the BSO, Jenny Shames, and we did very well. Eventually, I left the BSO, and it really put a damper on things. The trio almost ceased to be. Basically the group fell apart because I moved away. A few years later we revived the trio at the behest of Andrés’ management, Herbert Barrett Management, because Issac Stern wanted us to play for the 100-year celebration of Carnegie Hall. The manager put us together with one of the violinists on their roster, Benny Kim. We did the one-time concert with him, and had a great time doing it. Unfortunately, someone in the management office told Benny that he’d ruin his solo career if he did chamber music, so he really expressed no interest in playing more concerts with the trio. Then, David Kim came into the picture, and we played with him for several years until decided to leave to further his solo career also. Around this time I’d played a chamber music concert with Andrés Cardenes [concertmaster of the Pittsburgh Symphony], and we asked him if he had any interest in doing the trio. The fact that it was the trés amigos playing these concerts held some appeal, you know. So we asked him if doing the trio would hurt his solo aspirations; when he looked at us like we were from Mars, we knew we had our violinist. So, that’s the group we have now. We have way too much fun, it should be illegal to get paid to have that much fun! We love it. It’s not a full-time thing – we combine schedules from the two orchestras a year or so in advance and block out periods that all three of us are available, and we get as much to do as we’re able to do. We probably spend about 4 to 5 weeks during the season together, then most of the summer. In the winter we do mainly concerts, in the summer we do various festivals. We do piano quartets with Angela Chang; we’ve done guitar quartets on tour in Canada with Norbert Kraft. I would say we spend a couple of months out of the year together, and we play as many concerts together as we can during that time. We do it for the fun of it, and at the same time we get to play literature that people don’t get to hear all the time. The Beethoven Trios are fantastic, the Hindemith Trios are incredible, as well as Schnittke and Schoenberg. People hear the quartets by these composers many times over, but not some of the trios. I mean, the Mozart Divertimento (K. 563) - what more can you say? Even though the literature is not so big as the quartet literature, we have enough repertoire to keep us busy for a long time. Gunther Schuller is writing a piece for us now. That will be great (and very challenging). Thomas Oboe Lee wrote a piece for us. We premiered a piece by Myra Rosenbaum. We’re just in the production stages of a recording of a recital program we did at Curtis with producer George Blood, who does the recordings for the Philadelphia Orchestra broadcasts, and did the Druckman Concerto recording. The works on the program are the Irving Fine Trio, which is a really wonderful piece, the Dohnanyi Serenade, the Beethoven G major Op. 9/1, and the Penderecki Trio -- all great pieces. And we’d really like to find someone who is interested in a recording of the two Hindemith Trios, paired with the viola/cello duo.

Recitals – Recitals are a tough thing to keep going. It’s not easy to program them, the last one I did almost killed me. It was at BYU for the opening of the Primrose Room at the BYU library, and was a program entirely of Primrose transcriptions. I wonder if Primrose every played a whole recital of his transcriptions? It’s quite a challenge! I must say, looking back on the experience, that even though looking forward to that recital was very frightening, it was a very rewarding and valuable experience, doing that kind of playing for two solid hours. Plus, the opportunity to play the viola on which Primrose performed and recorded many of these transcriptions makes the idea of doing the recital again and then recording it very appealing. The viola has resurfaced after being in hiding for 40 or maybe even 50 years, and had a major restoration to put it into top shape; it is a great honor to use this instrument for however long it’s meant to be with me. Not a single piece on the Primrose program had I done before I was asked to put the program together. A whole new program of “Primrose-related music” -- I should say that because there was one piece on the program that Primrose did not transcribe, but was instead written for him: the Bergsma Fantastic Variations on a Theme from Tristan. I love that piece. It was a really fun piece to put together, a really wonderful piece, that I also did at the Viola Congress in Seattle. I’m always on the lookout for new material to do, but for the most part, my programs lately have been made up of works that I’ve already known, in different combinations.

Concertos -- What I have been working on lately in terms of new works are concertos. I get to play a subscription series with the orchestra here every season, and it’s my private little project to play premieres of works with the orchestra – not necessarily world premieres, but works that haven’t been played with the Philadelphia Orchestra before. I’ve come across so really great things that way: the Rozsa concerto, the Druckman concerto, for example. I’m very hopeful to do the Denisov concerto, which I worked on with the composer in Moscow before he died. I have been learning new things, including a very wonderful concerto by Schedrin. I’ve been learning a lot more new repertoire for viola and orchestra than viola and piano these days.

Next season I’ll be fortunate enough to do the world premiere with the Pittsburgh Symphony of a piece co-commissioned by the Pittsburgh Symphony and the Philadelphia Orchestra, a double concerto for violin and viola by Roberto Sierra, with Andrés Cardenes. It will be premiered with the Pittsburgh Symphony in the 2003-2004 season, and in the following season with the Philadelphia Orchestra. I’ve also gotten a new concerto for viola and cello by a friend of mine who is a really, really fine composer, David Teie, a cellist in the National Symphony. I like his music a lot because it’s very accessible and it’s very high energy, very lyrical and romantic. Audiences really respond to it well, it helps them with their fears about contemporary music that they’ve heard in the past and not liked. Pieces like the Denisov or the Rozsa have really made people realize that the viola can be a unique solo instrument, just as enjoyable as a violin concerto or piano concerto. People become fans of the viola that way. It’s great to expose them to the standard works as well as some of the more unfamiliar pieces.

This season I’m going more to Europe to play, and it seems like audiences there are more used to having viola works with orchestra than they are here. In the States there are very few orchestras that have a viola soloist every season, and I’m very thankful that Maestro Sawallisch made it possible here in Philadelphia. I’ve also been fortunate to get very nice press for the concertos I’ve done here. One of the things that the press mentions is the variety of new music we do here, and how great it is, like Der Schwanendreher; that it was nice to hear a great orchestra perform the piece really well, with a conductor that really loves Hindemith. Eventually, with a lot of performing of these viola pieces, maybe we’ll see more than one violist during a season with an orchestra like this, which would be a great thing. But from what I hear, in Europe it’s much easier to get viola works performed with orchestra.

I think that there a lot of really good pieces that have been written relatively recently but aren’t being played today. That’s what has been my focus, rather than commissioning new works, though the Sierra commission is very exciting. Someday, I’d like to do a work that’s commissioned for me, but I don’t want to spend the orchestra’s money, and a composer’s time, to commission a work to be played here only once, and then never be heard again. At this point though, I think that I would have an easier time promoting a new piece in Europe rather than the United States. The main thing is making sure that the piece gets the exposure that it deserves. It doesn’t really serve anyone to have a piece written, play it here in Philadelphia for 10,000 people, and then wait 15 years before it is played again. I’ve been having conversations with Riccardo Lorenze, a very good composer in Venezuela about a new concerto, and my manager has said on many occasions that having a Latin American connection would be good, which we have with the Sierra piece. Riccardo keeps threatening to write a viola concerto, and we’ve talked about what kind of a piece it would be, and what the style would be, so we can actually get repeat performances of it. Not that it must be a sellout, but that it has appeal to large audiences, much like the Schnittke concerto does. Not only is Bashmet playing the concerto all over the world, but every major viola player in the world wants to play the piece, and audiences want to hear it. It doesn’t hurt to have somebody like Bashmet playing the concerto all over the world – pieces really need performers to promote them to audiences.

Schedule/Time – You certainly have to look at the year coming up as a whole and see what demands are on your time. I certainly don’t have the luxury of saying that “this year I will play this concerto and this concerto, and then this recital program, and you can choose from this small list,” I just have to take things as they come. You have to consider overall, how many concertos am I playing this year, how far apart are they, what is the orchestra’s schedule, what am I doing with the trio, are there any new works? It’s very hard to keep up with it all. Some years I think, how could I have said I’d do all of this? So, a new piece can affect how many other projects you take on, and even how many students you take in a given year. There’s always the performance with the Philadelphia Orchestra, which is huge. Not only is it the Philadelphia Orchestra, but it’s home. You want it to be absolutely your best. There’s a lot more pressure than going somewhere else; there’s always pressure, but at least you can always leave somewhere else. That’s always the focal point, the Philadelphia Orchestra performance. You want to make sure that it’s “bulletproof” when you walk on stage in front of your colleagues. It has to be bulletproof. There are so many considerations in every season. I can’t imagine learning more than one brand new piece per year.

Family – Sometimes you think to yourself, when you’re nervous about something coming up, it’s really worrying you, and then you think to yourself “in the big scheme of things, how important is this in relation to other things in my life, like my daughter, Sofia, and my wife, Elissa? It doesn’t mean that it doesn’t matter, but your priorities get turned upside down by having a family. I don’t mean that like music doesn’t matter. It doesn’t mean that you aren’t as driven or as conscious about how you need to do things, or that you’re lowering your standards, but it puts things in a hugely different perspective. You know that you can go home and someone is going to be waiting for you with a huge smile. If you don’t have to worry about missing that high note, it actually makes you nail it, and nail it with a little smile on your face. That’s a great thing.

~Charles Noble has been the Assistant Principal violist of the Oregon Symphony since 1995. He studied with Roberto Díaz at the Peabody Conservatory and the University of Maryland.