Viola professor to perform

Atar Arad, a professor of viola at IU's School of Music, will be presenting a recital Sunday of 20th century works, including four original compositions.\nA former prize-winner at the Geneva International Viola Competition and frequent recording artist, Arad has established himself as one of the music world's "foremost violists performing today," according to radio station WFIU.\n"(He is) a wonderful, dazzling musician whose personality is as wonderful as his playing," colleague and voice professor Alice Hopper said.\nArad's interests are not restricted to merely playing the viola, but extend to writing for it as well.\n"I have this habit of playing the instrument and improvising," Arad said. "Before I knew it, instead of my instrument, I was holding a pen and music paper."\nA self-described "late bloomer," Arad has discovered new ways to express himself through composition. His first piece, completed in 1992, was a sonata for solo viola, a composite of his many improvisations. \n"With the food came the appetite," Arad said.\nSince the completion of his sonata, he has composed a string quartet which he said was "one of the most exciting things of my life" and the four caprices he will perform in his recital Sunday. \nHis earlier works, particularly the sonata, reveal his native Israel to be a source of inspiration. \n"Very quickly, I discovered that what I was writing expressed something else than just the technique of the viola …" Arad said. "It was mainly a feeling of Israel and Israeli music of the '50s and '60s." \nThis musical culture in which he grew up was a result of the mass migration to the infant nation in the years following the Holocaust. Countless Eastern European Jews found a new home in Israel and strove to create a new, distinct sound, he said. \nWhat resulted was what Arad calls an "attractive mish-mash" of styles, incorporating the sounds of the Arabs, Bedouins, and other regional flavors, while drawing from the music traditions of Eastern European and Balkan nations, including his mother's native Bulgaria.\n"I really wanted to do something which reflects the technique of the viola," he said of the caprices, his most recent compositions, " ... and also to do something where you don't know if the importance is in the musical ideas or the technical expression. ... Hopefully, the two will go together." \nAs a model, Arad uses violinist Niccolo Paganini's set of 24 caprices as well as Frederic Chopin's catalog of piano etudes, describing each as a masterpiece of both musical integrity and technical facility. \nIn addition to using existing repertoire as a formal model, Arad inserts bits and pieces of famous viola works, including two of the sonatas on the program, into each caprice.\nHe said he hopes eventually to have a complete set of 24 caprices as well as a viola concerto. \n"I'm just having fun writing for the instrument," he said.\n-- Contact staff writer Eric Anderson at eraander@indiana.edu.