Thursday, July 24, 2008

I thought of EineKleineRob last night as I listened to Ruth Padel talk about violas

Brilliant. Coming home from seeing Ballboy last night (of which more later!) we had Radio 3 on in the car -- yes, we are the sort of people who go see pop music and come home to random classical, world, jazz and conversation radio.

We caught a wonderful piece by Ruth Padel talking about her experience of the viola. And I couldn't help but think of lovely EineKleineRob.

Hope he caught it.

1 comment:

Rob said...

No I didn't, but on your recommendation I dug out the headphones and fired up iPlayer to hear it now, even though I was falling asleep and about to log off. What a lovely piece. Most of what she said I already knew, but how delightfully she expressed it. I always think of myself as a Second Violin, which is very much What I Do in orchestras, though in fact I lead our string quartet. (That's mainly because I organised it, but I really should swap seats with Emma some time: it would do us both good.) If violas are intermediate beteeen violins and cellos, second violins are intermediate between firsts and violas.

I never knew Jimi Hendrix started out on viola! John Cale of course kept with it.

And viola players can give as good as they get in the joke department. Q: "Whay are violins smaller than violas?" A: "They're not. It's an optical illusion: the violinists's heads are bigger."

And now I am reminded that I have to find a soloist to play Harold In Italy with my orchestra next May....

Thank you for drawing my attention to the programme.