Hillary Herndon - 1919 Viola Sonatas - Hidden Treasures from an Epoch Year (2022)

In 2017, viola historian David Bynog contacted me with a request to perform as part of a presentation he would be giving at the 2018 American Viola Society Festival regarding the famed 1919 Berkshire Festival Competition. The competition has long held a place of fascination amongst violists. Although we know of the infamous “tie” between the Bloch 1919 Suite and the Clarke Sonata, the two works now being mainstays of our repertoire, there have been numerous inquiries into what the other works submitted were. In answer to that question, David unearthed a fascinating list of works that may have been submitted to the fabled competition. While learning the excerpts for the AVS Festival presentation, Wei-Chun Bernadette Lo and I conceived of an exciting idea: to present a recreation of the 1919 competition in recital form. On the first half of the program, the audience would hear movements from seven unidentified works that were likely entered into the competition, and would be asked to vote for the work they would like to hear in its entirety. At intermission, the votes would be tallied. At the start of the second half, the identities of all the works and their composers would be revealed, to be followed by a performance of the “winning work” in its entirety. To date, we have presented this program more than a dozen times in cities all over the United States to captivated audiences, and with remarkable results: every piece presented has won at least once! The works heard in these recordings represent our favorites, along with one “bonus”: the third movement of Granville Bantock’s Sonata in F major. The recording heard here is an edited version of the composer’s own original score. [Hillary Herndon, December 2021]