PAGANINI “La campanella,” from Concerto No. 2 in B minor, Op. 7 (arr. William Primrose) HD

Niccolò Paganini “La campanella,” from Concerto No. 2 in B minor, Op. 7 (arr. William Primrose) Haeji Kim, viola Elena Jivaeva, piano Performed on Tuesday, December 1, 2015 Field Concert Hall, Curtis Institute of Music, Philadelphia It is a fitting pairing: a relatively obscure work by one of the most legendary virtuosos of the violin, Niccolò Paganini, adapted into a showpiece by arguably the greatest viola virtuoso of the 20th century, William Primrose. Primrose’s aim was to elevate the often overlooked instrument from being, in his words, the “dull dog” of the string family. Primrose made numerous valuable additions to the viola repertoire in the form of arrangements and transcriptions from popular string repertoire as well as from lieder and opera. Many of these pieces provided useful repertoire for his own concertizing. Today Primrose’s lasting influence can be heard through his decades of teaching, which is evident in numerous ways through this very performance. Among Primrose’s students during his 1942-1951 tenure at the Curtis Institute of Music was Joseph de Pasquale, who subsequently taught Roberto Díaz at Curtis. Díaz would go on to take de Pasquale’s place as principal viola of the Philadelphia Orchestra, in addition to joining the Curtis faculty before becoming the school’s president in 2006. But the Primrose connection doesn’t stop there: Díaz’s father and first teacher, Manuel Díaz, also studied with Primrose, and Roberto currently plays on the ‘ex-Primrose’ Antonio and Girolamo Amati viola, featured on his Grammy-nominated 2006 recording of Primrose transcriptions. It should come as no surprise, then, that we come full circle to hear Haeji Kim, a student of Roberto Díaz, continue this performance tradition at Curtis.