Viola d'amore Congress

Abstract

For four days in June, Room 28 of the Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandeum in Innsbruck was all but off-limits for normal visitors while the delegates of the 16th International Viola d’amore Congress occupied it from early morning until after closing time. It would have been hard to come up with a more appropriate place for such an event, since—even if this particular room contains mostly paintings of idealized themes from Tyrolean history—right next door there is a mouth-watering collection of stringed instruments made in the region. (As delegates were continually reminded, Jacob Stainer, the ‘father of German violin-making’, hailed from nearby Absam.) In most previous congresses of the Viola d’amore Society of America—at least in those I have attended—just sharing repertory old and new, as well as comparing notes on instruments and editions was enough of a raison d’être for getting together. This time, thanks to the planning talents of host Marianne Rônez, there were several musicological and organological threads running through the fully packed schedule. Each of the mini-recitals that ran almost attacca throughout the day had its own theme, starting with an introductory flourish that included music from—literally—the 18th to the 21st centuries, so as to bring a taste of what was to follow. The first sounds heard after the official welcome speeches were the typical D-majorish fanfares of a Partita by Johann Baptist Georg Neruda, and before long the strains of Dorothea Hofmann’s Dance of a Barbarian Queen, written only last year, filled the room. Together with the many other new and newish compositions that were played at the congress, this piece proved—if, that is, proof were needed—that the viola d’amore is in very rude health indeed. Since it is not Early Music’s province, and with space at a premium, I will only mention in passing that no fewer than seven compositions had their world premières in Innsbruck during the week, two of them having been commissioned for the occasion by Marianne Rônez from Tyrolean composers Christian Reimeir and Michael Huber to ‘go’ with Paul Hindemith’s Kammermusik no.6, and accordingly scored for the same orchestral forces.