Omnes una manet Knox

It's tough, learning to play contemporary music, so those who make it a specialism are tough people. All of which clearly makes Garth Knox - for 8 years the viola player with the Arditti Quartet, former member of Boulez's Ensemble Intercontemporain, and collaborator as a soloist with contemporary composers both well-known and not - some kind of muscled brute.

But Knox is not one to keep it all to himself. As well as his diverse teaching and performing activies (which include work in dance and theatre projects), he is also the composer of Viola Spaces, a set of studies whose admirable aim is to give students a way of practising contemporary techniques. You never know, I may even get hold of a copy myself.

Anyway, on his website Knox gives some sample performances of the studies. Here's a good one:



You can also watch him (or is it John Malkovich?), together with 3 fresh-faced apostles, run through his version of Marin Marais's Les Folies d'Espagne in which each variation demonstrates one of the techniques practised in the studies.

As I said, it's tough learning to play contemporary music. But Knox's website makes it easy to create your own contemporary viola masterpiece simply by playing the examples simultaneously. I recommend setting off the Marais variations first, then turning on the studies ad libitum to create a veritable palimpsest of viola sounds.