Page 80 - The Strad (February 2020)

Teaching & Playing
SCHUBERT ARPEGGIONE SONATA
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From Schubert
Arpeggione Sonata in
A minor D821. Urtext
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elegance from the time, but while his writing is not particularly idiomatically suited to
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Arpeggione Sonata are considerable, but the piece has a touching simplicity and an
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78 THE STRAD
MASTERCLASS
he arpeggione is the Cinderella of the stringed instrument family. Fortunately
the glass slipper it left behind, in the form of Schubert’s Arpeggione Sonata,
has remained a rare gem in the repertoire of cellists and viola players alike,
Tboth of whom are eager to claim it as their own. Indeed, the greater range and
sonority of the cello and viola do more justice to the song-like character of the sublime
music that Schubert in 1824 so willingly penned for this ‘test-tube’ instrument, as a
commission from his arpeggione virtuoso friend Vincenz Schuster.
Visually the arpeggione, invented around 1823, is a hybrid of the viola and the cello
combined uneasily with attributes of the guitar and viola da gamba. It is fretted but
bowed, six-stringed, and it has a „ngerboard length halfway between that of the viola and
the cello. ere are examples of cornerless violins by Stradivari to which the design bears
some resemblance, such as that played at one time by Joshua Bell, but the fact that no
other signi„cant music was composed for it only serves to underline its lack of attraction
to players and composers. Rather like a genetic mutation that has proved to be infertile,
it has for the most part been consigned to the shelves of the museum. ose brave souls
who have experimented with both making and playing it are to be lauded for their
advocacy, but time and natural selection have rather discredited their e‰orts.
In fact much of the music of this period has been forgotten, perhaps because – as was
typical of the 19th-century Viennese Biedermeier style – it did not challenge the listener.
Many of Schubert’s works capture an essential element of the zeitgeist ‘domestic’ music of
chamber music that elevates the genre to a di‰erent level. e technical demands of the
a‰ectionate heart that should never be far from one’s mind in the matter of interpretation.
THE
SOLOIST
‘We need to be able to
spin the melody like
NAME
MORAY WELSH
unrolling a scroll of
NATIONALITY parchment that reveals
SCOTTISH
itself as it unfolds’
STUDIED WITH
KITTY GREGORSON, JOAN
DICKSON, MSTISLAV
ROSTROPOVICH
8'$38&-2+9 !2& <6$31-2+ $32$'8;
BACKGROUND '2+!+'1'2;9T 9'' www.moraywelsh.com
INTERNATIONAL SOLOIST AND LONDON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
TEACHER; PRINCIPAL CELLIST
OF THE LSO 1992–2007
www.thestrad.com