Viola Concerto

For me, the viola has always been first and foremost an extraordinary vocal instrument. For me as a musician, playing chamber music with the viola is one of the most beautiful things in the world. Stories can be told on the viola's C string alone that would be unthinkable on any other string instrument. The main setting in my Viola Concerto is a utopian land: an alien-feeling sphere at the beginning, populated exclusively by viola pizzicati in all possible and impossible variations; then as a yearning song from an imaginary oriental fairyland; finally a plunge into artistically absurd cascades of virtuosity that introduce the work's centrepiece, an aria for viola and extremely muted strings; a painfully intimate farewell to a sunken world. Jörg Widmann