In partnership with the Curtis Institute of Music, WHYY presents the following program.

[MUSIC] Hello, my name is Davin Marr.

I am a violist and I am in the third year of my undergrad studies at Curtis.

[MUSIC] Viola in particular was kind of what I was drawn to as an instrument, and the viola doesn't really have any repertoire really outside of the classical range or the contemporary classical range, if that makes sense.

And I just fell in love with the sound of the viola since I was very little.

It's so warm and to me it's a very comforting sound.

I've always been able to rely on it.

When I first started playing viola I was pretty little.

I started when I was about four years old.

And I actually started because my parents tried to enroll me in the violin class at the local music school, but the violin class was full and I ended up on the viola, which I think turned out to be one of the greatest blessings I've had in music so far.

One of the first memorable performances that comes to mind for me was probably my first solo performance at Curtis.

So this would have been about two years ago, I think it was in November, and I played the Rebecca Clark Viola Sonata and it was my first time.

I'd been on stage at Curtis before, but I hadn't been, you know, I felt kind of alone up there because it's a viola sonata, it's just me and the pianist.

I remember being extremely nervous because as much as I tried to just remember that I'm at Curtis and I'm here to study, to me it kind of felt like my first, the time I was going to be first exposed to everybody else, my peers and also my teachers as well.

So for me it was one of the most nerve-wracking performances I've ever had, but I'd say what made it a highlight of my time here was just that afterwards I felt I'd played pretty well and I just I realized that you know I can do this and that I am at the right place and I felt more confident about myself.

Well I come definitely from a music loving family for sure.

My mother, she played bassoon and flute and my dad played saxophone.

My mother played a little bit in college but my dad only played in high school so I think they were very pleased when I really took to a musical instrument so young because it was something that was always a passion for them.

But of course I ended up taking it kind of farther than they did when they were my age.

Well I went to you know kind of a standard high school in Vancouver in Canada.

So it wasn't like a particularly musically inclined school.

There was a wonderful band program there where I played the trumpet for a little bit of time.

But my friends were very supportive and they kind of always knew me as the viola player at the school because there's not that many viola players and then much less at the one school I was at.

The first performance I have for you is an excerpt of Hindemith's Viola Sonata Op.

11 No.

4.

It's from a recording I did about a year ago today.

[APPLAUSE] Hindemith is a major viola composer, probably the composer with the greatest number of viola works out there.

He wrote tons of viola sonatas with piano and solo viola pieces, a couple of viola concertos.

Any violist knows who Hindemith is for sure, and it was just a pleasure to play his 11.4 sonata.

Definitely one of the most beautiful works he has.

[Music] When I first came to Curtis, I was really keen to do some kind of outreach work or work that brought my music, or music in general, to people outside of the standard concert audience.

[Music] One thing I got involved with was the Creative Expressions Through Music project at Curtis.

The music class partnered with the Penn Memory Center and it aims to bring music into the lives of people that are experiencing a memory-related disease, most commonly Alzheimer's or dementia.

And I found this to be probably one of the most meaningful parts of my Curtis experience, for sure.

You know, you get to know the participants and we just have a lot of fun together making music.

[Music] I think Curtis for me is a place, well for I think almost any musician that comes, is a place to explore.

There's so many opportunities to be had at Curtis and you are not settled into one thing.

You can do anything on your instrument that you can dream of because you have the most amazing teachers on your instrument at your disposal but also incredible faculty on other instruments and incredible student composers that work with us and faculty composers.

You play the most amazing chamber music, orchestra music, solo music.

So really the world's your oyster when you come to Curtis.

I try to think about when I'm comparing the viola and viola performance to a cellist or a violinist, I try to think about what's special about the viola.

And to me that would be the intimacy of the viola.

The viola is a very warm instrument, it's a very loving instrument.

I think it's one of the most beautiful instruments out there.

And a lot of times I feel like composers are trying to express something very personal, very deep with the viola.

It's not very often you get, you know, big show pieces on the viola like you do on the violin.

I had a teacher that once said, "The violin is a firecracker, the viola is a fine bottle of wine."

And I have always thought that's very true and I try to strive for that when I play.

[fast-paced classical string music] ?

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I'd say I'm kind of comfortable in a mixture of the three, orchestra, chamber music and solo playing.

To me, it's hard to decide.

I mean, I'm still in my undergraduate degree and I'm still exploring all the different types of music out there, but I've definitely been looking into some orchestra auditions as well as doing some chamber music festivals in the summer.

And then of course I perform solo repertoire at Curtis and anywhere else I can.

I think my favorite viola repertoire includes any kind of pieces that are atypical for one reason or another.

I feel like the viola, especially as a solo instrument, is very oddball in that it's kind of sandwiched between the violin and the cello and has very little repertoire in comparison to both those sibling instruments that the viola has.

I always try to look for pieces that a composer wrote, maybe when they had a special circumstance or a special feeling and then therefore they chose the viola to express that because I feel like typical pieces, not to say any music is typical, you know they go to the violin and the cello but I find that composers, in my opinion, often lean to the viola when they're trying to express something that they're less sure about or something new.

The second performance I have is the first movement of Charles Martin Loeffler's Two Rhapsodies for Viola, Oboe and Piano.

So this is a chamber music where it's actually in collaboration with someone who I think was on this project earlier this week.

And just, I had a fantastic time playing with some great friends at school and also just incredible music.

Loeffler is a very unique composer and the sound in that piece is very dark, sometimes very tragic, but just incredible viola repertoire, piano repertoire, oboe repertoire.

(gentle piano music) (crying) (music) For me, I'm starting to think about some orchestra auditions to see if I might want to do a little bit of work after I leave Curtis, as well as I'm starting to think about where I'll apply for my Master's degree, so some other music schools perhaps in the U.S.

or maybe in Europe.

I'm also still attending festivals and meeting new people that I haven't met before and see what opportunities come with that.

[MUSIC PLAYING] Typically, string players doing auditions are usually auditioning for orchestras.

There's also chamber music auditions if a quartet is looking to find, or some other ensemble is looking to find another member.

But orchestra auditions are very interesting in that you're given snippets of 30 seconds of a bunch of different pieces.

And you have to be ready to play each of those snippets perfectly whenever the people that It's an interesting environment because you're usually behind a screen, so they just hear the music and they don't actually see who's playing.

And it's kind of like, boom, Mendelssohn's scherzo, go.

And it's kind of like, boom, Mendelssohn's scherzo, go.

Or, you know, they're always keeping you on your toes and you never quite know what to expect.

It's a long list of music and you kind of have to feel like you're solid on everything to play it at any time.

It's ballpark in three years I imagine I'd still be a young musician, maybe still in school somewhere.

At five years I hope to have some kind of job, maybe playing in a quartet or playing in an orchestra.

And at ten years I hope to find a place where I really feel that the music I'm making is valuable to me and to the people I'm giving it to.

So classical music I think to me is kind of an ambiguous term because anyone who's studied music theory knows that there's a classical era of music but there's also a Baroque era and a Romantic era and a Contemporary era.

But as a violist, just generally, I love playing contemporary music.

I love playing new works, particularly because a lot of the viola repertoire is actually nested in more modern works, usually 20th century and beyond.

For me it's always very interesting because it's just the latest ways to explore the instrument, the latest thoughts people have had on what the viola can do or what the string repertoire can do.

[violin playing] I think when I first heard this question I was tempted to think of, you know, people I really admire and people, famous people, or you know, the biggest names.

But the more I thought about it, I think I wouldn't really sell anything for the experiences I have with my friends and my fellow students at school or at festivals.

We just, we learn so much from each other and you know, I want to look back and think about the people I developed as a musician with and the people that I did almost my growth with and I don't think I'd want to play with anyone else besides them at least for now.

In my third year now at Curtis I'm already starting to think about what's to come after I graduate.

I've got this year and then one more year to go and I'm thinking I will either stay in the US or maybe I'll go to Europe.

If I go to Europe that would probably be to continue my education to do a Masters somewhere, maybe in Germany or elsewhere I suppose.

There's a lot of great, wonderful players in Europe in general and they have a very different approach to playing than there is in the US sometimes.

And then if I stay in the US, that would either be to go to another school for my master's degree or to take some auditions for jobs and hopefully do some work before I decide what to do next.

So a message to my younger self, you know the music, the whole music direction, or maybe it's true of anything but I'm only familiar with the music way, you know you never really know exactly what's coming next and you can't be certain of what school I'm going to get into or which audition is going to pan out or this or that.

But if I could have talked to my younger self I would have just told myself to stay trusting and to believe in what I'm doing because at the end of the day everything usually works out in some way or another and I mean I found my way here and I'm very happy and three years ago I wouldn't have known this was even a possibility so just to stay stay in the game and keep my head down and do the work I believe in.

My future self... It's tempting at this age, especially as I'm leaving school, to think about settling down or finding a very secure job.

But especially in music, I want to make sure that I keep exploring and keep developing as a player and never become sedentary in what I'm doing and to always be ready for the next opportunity or ready for the next place that the viola will take me.

[Music] (beep) (classical music) (beep) - Nope, not yet.

This is the promo graphic.

Take one, we're just gonna go all the way through all four.

(classical music)