Music Review: Jonathan Bagg – ‘Viola Revival,’ 20th-century American Works by Marion Bauer, Ulysses Kay, and Margaret Bond

It seems there’s always more to discover in the annals of 20th-century American music. Violist Jonathan Bagg has dipped into the sea of worthy compositions and fished out some excellent modern/neoclassical music for his instrument and piano. The viola is still somewhat neglected in the repertoire for string soloists, but many composers and violists continue to work to remedy that. With his new album Viola Revival, Bagg makes valuable contributions to our awareness of some worthy viola repertoire – and of some American composers who should be better known.

I first encountered the music of Marion Bauer (1882–1955) on American Virtuosa, an album on which Rachel Barton Pine paid tribute to the now-obscure violinist Maud Powell with a selection of 20th-century American music. Bauer was a highly influential promoter of contemporary American composers in the first part of the century, and a composer of many fine works rarely performed today. Jonathan Bagg puts Bauer’s Sonata for Viola and Piano, Op. 22 (1932) first on his album.

The piece opens with a rich “Allegretto (rubato)” that mingles a deep draught of late Romanticism with flourishes of modernist jaggedness. The fluid, sweet-toned rendition by Bagg and pianist Emely Phelps continues into the second movement, a whispery Andante and sparkly Scherzo in one. Bauer’s flowing melodies shine and a trace of playfulness emerges at the end. The rhythmically insistent, gritty but dance-like main theme of the “Allegro” finale bursts forth with controlled aggression. Unexpectedly a short cadenza and slow section intervene, before the dance returns.

The whole sonata is over in hardly more than 15 minutes but is packed with ideas that suggest more significance than the work did in its time. It’s true Bauer was not exploring the extremes of modernism, but her mastery of a half-century or more of rapid musical development is fully evident here.

Ulysses Kay was studying with Paul Hindemith when he wrote his Sonata for Viola and Piano in 1942. It’s not hard to hear an influence. Hindemith wrote sonatas for many instruments that are not heard so often today, and the same is true of Kay, who was prolific in many genres. In this sonata he underpins his melodies with chromaticism to starkly emotional effect. Bagg and Phelps have clearly devoted plenty of study and love to interpreting the work, and bring out all its merits.

Margaret Bonds has become better known recently thanks to a concerted revival of music by 20th-century Black American composers. It’s a sign, I think, of the success of these efforts that the album has minimal rhetorical focus on the fact that two of the three composers, Kay and Bonds, were African American.

Bonds’ single-movement “Troubled Water” is based on the Negro Spiritual “Wade in the Water.” She composed it originally for solo piano, then created an arrangement for cello and piano, which Bagg has adapted for viola and piano. It forms a lyrical contrast with the Kay sonata and displays in just seven and a half minutes inventive, wide-ranging development of rawly powerful material – indeed an unusually deep fusion of folk music and modern classical technique. The listener can decide whether the “water” here seems truly “troubled.” But Bagg and pianist Mimi Solomon explore it closely, with invigorating results.

Viola Revival from Jonathan Bagg is out now on New Focus Recordings and available at Bandcamp.