Violist David Harding joins Vetta Chamber Music for its season-opening concert
The artist felt at home the first time he played the viola at age 16
David Harding.
Vetta Chamber Music presents Liminal Spaces on September 27 at 2 pm at West Point Grey United Church; September 28 at 7:30 pm at West Vancouver United Church; September 29 at 2 pm at Pyatt Hall; and September 30 at 2:30 pm at ArtSpring on Salt Spring Island
DAVID HARDING WAS hooked on the viola from the very first moment he tried playing it at age 16. He had spent the previous six years on violin, music filling the home he shared with his parents, both pianists.
“The sound and sonority was what drew me to it,” Harding tells Stir of his chosen instrument. “I just love the noise it can make. I felt so at home when I first tried it as a teenager. The challenges are like any other instrument—to play at the highest level you must master it technically and make it sing as if it were the human voice.”
Harding will perform at Vetta Chamber Music’s 2024-25 season-opening concert, Liminal Spaces, as part of a string quartet that includes Zoltan Rozsnyai on cello and Maria Larionoff and Joan Blackman on violin.
“The viola has a wonderful role in a string quartet,” says Harding, who has one viola that was made in France and another that came from Italy. “Sometimes you weave accompaniment between the bass and the melody. And we also play the bass line and get to sing a melody. We are the chameleon of the string quartet. Sometimes you are a violin and sometimes a cello. If the viola was not there, you would miss it.”
The concert takes its name from those “moments between” that are found in time and space, explains Vetta artistic director Joan Blackman.
“Vetta’s 39th season, themed around connections, opens with a string quartet program that offers a thoughtful reflection on the transformative moments that bridge experiences, particularly through music,” Blackman says. “Music, as in life, moves between in and out breath, between excitement and calm. This program explores the movement between these two interconnected forces and that moment of transition when the swing is suspended in mid-air, the liminal space.”
Making up the concert program are Mozart’s String Quartet No. 19 in C major, K. 465, “Dissonance”; Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 10 in E-flat major, Op. 74, “Harp”; and Canadian composer Jeffrey Ryan’s String Quartet #4: Inspirare.
“From the movement between the opening dissonance and despair to utter consonance and delight in Mozart’s Dissonance Quartet to the unyielding spiralling of musical tension into final relaxation in Beethoven, we then find connection to the liminal space in Canadian composer Jeffrey Ryan’s String Quartet #4: Inspirare, which seeks a musical iteration of the breath, in and out, and the transformative instant between the two,” Blackman says. “The string quartet is a form that requires a master composer to balance between the individual voices and the string texture of four as one. Mozart and Beethoven certainly understood this. Jeffrey Ryan also knows how to navigate this difficult chemical balance that must be achieved.”
Ryan and Blackman will offer a talkback session after the performance, speaking to the links and contrasts between the composer’s music and that of the two late masters.
“The Beethoven and Mozart quartets we are will be performing represent the pinnacle of the classical era,” says Harding, who has performed and taught around the globe. “Both pieces are profound in impact and are truly sublime works. Jeffrey Ryan is one of Canada’s great contemporary composers. I have been privileged to have recorded several of his works over the years and am so excited to tackle a new work. His music offers full emotional impact and technical challenges.” 
Related Articles
