Andante Appassionato for Solo Viola

The first movement to a planned suite for solo viola. I had in mind @danishali903's call for solo viola pieces, but for a while couldn't quite come up with anything that I was satisfied with. However the other day I was improvising started to come up with this piece. Then next day I wrote it down and gave it a few finishing touches and here we are. I'm pretty happy with how it came out, likely because I wrote this one while playing it so that I made full use of the instrument. It's inspired largely by pieces such as Vieuxtemps' viola capriccio (coincidentally my piece is in C minor as well), and Reger's viola suites.

Since this piece is for solo viola and is highly expressive I decided to record it myself. It's not perfect, but I couldn't spend the same amount of time on it I spend on my performance pieces unfortunately. Hope you enjoy.

Recording's a bit off, haha. It's cool, though. I got it. 
Do you do down down in the first measure? Or up down? Small details like that can make a piece look a lot more professional, which this definitely has the potential to.
The terraced dynamics you have starting at m. 20 seems a bit out of place, as though the entire section from before could be one huge buildup.
Those are some big jumps; it helps when the C and G are played open so you have time to find it but a jump to a high G in 4th position with a double stop will take some practice.
It's lovely and motivic. Danish has some good rep now!

58 minutes ago, Monarcheon said:

Do you do down down in the first measure? Or up down? Small details like that can make a piece look a lot more professional, which this definitely has the potential to.

Good point. It is up-up.

58 minutes ago, Monarcheon said:

The terraced dynamics you have starting at m. 20 seems a bit out of place, as though the entire section from before could be one huge buildup.

I'm not 100% sure what you mean by that, do you mean the drop to mp after the fortissimo seems out of place? Or do you mean that the buildup to the the fortissimo in m.20 should start earlier (continuing from the crescendo in m.13)?

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It's lovely and motivic. Danish has some good rep now!

Thanks!

1 minute ago, SebastianViola said:

It is up-up.

Up up??

1 minute ago, SebastianViola said:

I'm not 100% sure what you mean by that, do you mean the drop to mp after the fortissimo seems out of place?

Yes. I played it on cello and the terrace is far too much.

2 minutes ago, Monarcheon said:

Up up??

Sorry I though you were referring to the slur in m.2, the begging is played down up and then as it comes.

2 minutes ago, Monarcheon said:

Yes. I played it on cello and the terrace is far too much.

 

Hmm, I'm not sure. Personally, I like that it builds from a forte to fortissimo, then drops down for a even bigger buildup when it repeats. Since that particular moment is a flat out repeat, I feel like just straightforward crescendo would get a little dull and the sotto voce is a bit of a fun surprise. I think I will mark in a breath after the B-G double stop before the drop to mp though.

Also I don't know if you deleted my other posts or they were auto-deleted but sorry about that, I think I accidentally pressed a hotkey that spammed the submit somehow.

I like that technique too. However normally when that happens, the orchestration accommodates the dynamic a little more, but there's nothing wrong with it.

Just sight read it and made a recording of it (and have attached it here). Quite a fun piece, some of the double stop leaps were hard...maybe with more practice.

I honestly preferred the "up-down" bowing for that motif. 

On 12/22/2016 at 3:24 PM, danishali903 said:

Just sight read it and made a recording of it (and have attached it here). Quite a fun piece, some of the double stop leaps were hard...maybe with more practice.

Thank you!! It's quite fun getting to see how someone else plays it, and I'm glad you enjoyed it despite the double stops haha.

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I honestly preferred the "up-down" bowing for that motif. 

For the C to C-C double stop? Because that is done up-down. I just made a few small changes to the score to hopefully avoid any confusion.