When you play the viola and you want to be a soloist (some would wonder whatever would possess anyone to put these two things together) you eventually have to look for repertoire in the oh-so-fertile fields beyond your own small but respectable little plot. (I can say these things because I am one of those who chooses to play this, the real king of instruments.) And what better than to indulge in works of the highest technical and artistic merit–that you can play all by yourself? Such would be these transcriptions of Bach’s six suites for solo cello, which happen to translate very nicely to the viola, an instrument whose strings, tuned an octave higher, are configured identically to those of the cello. What listeners used to hearing these lines on the larger, deeper, more hugely resonant cello must remember is that the viola is not the cello, and if you adjust your ears to such a difference and just listen to the music, you’ll discover that the viola should have every right to utter these incredible lines, and violists every right to offer their own interpretive insights. Besides, the sound still has an invitingly warm, dark resonance–and where on the cello the lines seem weightier, more profoundly substantive, on the viola they sing in a register that’s more like a human voice and thus more familiar in its communicative inflection and tone. It’s very easy to listen to this kind of sound.
As for the performances, Patricia McCarty, an experienced chamber musician and soloist, and former assistant principal violist of the Boston Symphony, must be applauded for her achievement. Besides passing all the requisite tests of intonation and bowing technique, she brings the fullness of the viola’s acoustic character totally into the sonic mix (especially effective in the C major suite), along the way refusing to adopt the scordatura for the fifth suite and choosing to perform the sixth in the original key of D major. Her exemplary articulation of sections such as the Allemande of the fourth suite, with its alternating patterns of broken melodic lines and streaming legato passages, shows an artist who knows what her instrument can do and how Bach’s music will best work in that context.
Nothing is forced or unnatural–in other words, in McCarty’s hands these pieces sound as if they were written for the viola. In an ironic sense, this appearance of such ease and naturalness in the way the music flows creates a little disappointment. These works sound more difficult and grand on the cello; here they seem to lose some of their monumentality. But that’s not McCarty’s fault, nor should it stop anyone from hearing Bach’s great masterpieces again in such agreeable and straightforward performances. The sound of McCarty’s cappuccino-toned instrument (full-bodied with a delicate touch of sweetness on top), captured in the near-legendary acoustics of New York’s Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, is a little close for my taste, but still quite inviting and comfortable for a brief visit or for an evening’s listening.
