It must draw the audience in, make them part of the performance. Something that the vastness and anonymity of an orchestra finds hard to achieve.

Mozart modernised Handel's Messiah, Schubert and Bach frequently recycled their fabulous melodies. Many of the great composers liked to arrange and re-arrange their own music, often a great work is known best in its arranged form; Pictures at an Exhibition by Mussorgsky is best know in its scored version by that unsurpassed master of orchestration, Maurice Ravel. Bach's Art of Fugue is not scored for any particular instrument, rather any combination that can preserve the linear integrity of the four human voices, and we've lost count of how many composers have helped themselves to Paganini's Twenty-Fourth Caprice. Folk music is always up-for-grabs, and early music originally scored for instruments that are passed their 'use by date' could do with a new airing. The challenge is to see just what a viola quartet can do with a piece. I hope we have succeeded.

We call it 'violaization', i.e. the conversion of a piece of music into the language of the viola quartet.

Here is a rather extreme example from Beethoven: the third variation from his amazing Opus 111 Piano Sonata. Not an easy piece to read, you must agree, and note the unusual time signature! After some careful 'violaization', and without changing a single note, it became Beethoven Boogie. The title was Ross's fault. He was having his mid-life crisis at the time, and thought it was just begging to be called Boogie - admittedly, perfectly understandable if you've heard it. It later became the 7th track on the CD album which is only available from this website. So what are you waiting for? Go to the Shopping Cart and buy a copy.