Helen Callus’s new release, British Music for Viola and Orchestra on the Naxos label with the New Zealand Symphony, Marc Taddei conductor. This video previews two of the works on the recording; the Herbert Howells Elegy for Solo Viola, String Quartet and Orchestra and the William Walton Concert for Viola and Orchestra.

The ‘warm voice’ of the viola has long been associated with pioneering British performers such as Lionel Tertis, for whom Vaughan Williams wrote his tuneful and elegantly crafted Suite. Tertis famously rejected the score of Walton’s Viola Concerto, but instantly regretted his decision on hearing its lyrical warmth and piquant blend of delicacy and bite at the premiere performed by Paul Hindemith. Howells’s sombre but noble Elegy is a memorial for a student colleague killed in action during WWI. Helen Callus ‘plays with sumptuous tone matched by flawless intonation’ (Gramophone).

NU Viola Studio goes Live on American Viola Society blog “From The Studio”. Check back in for new posts every few days on all kinds of topics from the students, culminating with one from Helen on how to practice fast passages.

Northwestern University viola professor Helen Callus describes the combination of skills necessary to succeed as a musician – talent being just one in a mixture of abilities. Being successful at anything takes a combination of skills and abilities, some of which are not as apparent as we might think and some not as significant as we might expect. Obviously without musical talent nothing is possible. However, over the years I have noticed that even those with the greatest talent are often times overtaken by those with a broader combination of skills. There is a mixture of abilities that seems to lend itself to success and musical talent is only one part of that equation.

No one enjoys walking off stage with the awful sense that things couldn’t have gone any worse. You only need to experience that feeling once, before something in you either clicks into battle-station mode and you become a practice machine, or you jump on the emotional roller coaster of fear and doubt – and, in some cases, turn your back on a performing career altogether. But is it all just about finding better ways to practise?

Check out Helen’s new Blog on practicing on The Violin Channel – the Worlds Leading Classical Music News Source.

Carl Fischer, the publisher in New York of the Flesch Scales that we all love (well, perhaps I wouldn’t go that far…love is a strong word but we know they are good for us right?) is slated to publish my 1 Step Scale System. They will come out late February 2016 in time for my presentation at the ASTA Convention in Miami in early March. To coordinate with this, the STRAD magazine is writing an article that should be published around Jan/Feb 2017 that lays out the system in a couple pages.

Helen Callus, hailed as “one of the world’s greatest violists” (American Record Guide), “a violist of the highest caliber” (Strings magazine), and “one of the foremost violists of her generation” (Fanfare magazine), has been appointed Professor of Viola at the Bienen School of Music at Northwestern University.

On October 9th I will be joining the legendary Fine Arts Quartet, playing the Brahms Quintet Op. 111. Of course I knew of them from my London days but they were founded in Chicago which I didn’t know! On their web site at the bottom of the page of their current Biography, is the story of their early days (way back from 1946 officially). Its a fascinating history and you can see under the membership link all the violists that held that position in the past 70 years. Of course the longest running was Bernie Zaslav whom violists will know from the online Viola.com list.

If you love the rich tone of the viola, and enjoy pieces by J.S. Bach and other, you’ll really love this album. Ms. Callus is an expressive, musical, yet technically perfect violist, and the selections and arrangements are superb. One of my favorite albums. Will not disappoint!