You may be forgiven for thinking there's not a lot of repertoire for a viola quartet (you'd be wrong, but, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, you might think it), and you may also think such repertoire that does exist is confined to the odd aberration from lesser-known mid-twentieth century composers - wrong again. So where does our lengthy repertoire list come from?  Are they all arrangements or transcriptions? Certainly not. Read on…

…We are very choosy about what pieces to include in our repertoire, and they come from many sources…

Original - 26

   Piano - 11

       Orchestral - 8

              Keyboard - 6

                    Violin concerto - 4

                          Trad. Folk - 4

                                 String quartet - 3

                                       Viola & piano - 3

                                             Viola concerto - 2

                                                   Vocal - 2

                                                         Violin solo - 1

                                                               Gamba - 1

You will see that the single largest category are purpose-written for the viola quartet (indeed, for Absolute Zero Viola Quartet). Next to that, we have raided the piano archives (since they have far more than they need already). We have to be very careful, however, to choose the right piece; for an arrangement to work, it mustn't sound like an arrangement. The viola does not have the range of the piano (hardly any instruments do), but it can do a lot of things that a piano cannot: sustain, crescendo, vibrato, glissando, quarter-tones, a wider range of attack and timbre, pizzicato, ponticello, and more - much more. A skilful arrangement will reveal aspects of a piano piece that can give it a completely new dimension.

As for the orchestra: Less is more - that is our aim. Once again, we choose very carefully. Distilling a symphonic work into a viola quartet must give it a real chamber music quality: intimacy, soloistic, dialogue, sensitivity, dynamics. 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, and Schubert frequently recycled his fabulous melodies. Many great composers liked to arrange and re-arrange their own music: Bach's Art of Fugue is not written for any particular instrument, rather any combination that can preserve the linear integrity of the four human voices. Folk music is always up-for-grabs, and early music originally scored for instruments that are no longer widely used could do with an update. 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.