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Transitions is the outstanding debut solo album from violist Jesse Morrison, a performance graduate from the Glenn Gould School and the University of Toronto now with the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra (Wolfe Records jessemorrisonviola.bandcamp.com/album/transitions).

The Partita for Solo Viola by the Boston-based composer Derek David, written “in adoration” of Bach’s solo instrumental works, was commissioned for this recording. Its six sections – Prelude, Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, Minuet, and Gigue and Fugue – are wide-ranging, both stylistically and emotionally; imagine someone playing the solo Bach Partitas who, unable to resist, constantly explodes into bursts of extreme modern technique. 

Skizzen für Siegbert (Sketches for Siegbert) by the Australian violist and composer Brett Dean was written as the compulsory piece for the 2012 Max Rostal Viola Competition. Dean played viola with the Berlin Philharmonic from 1985 to 1999, this piece being a tribute to his initial desk partner, Siegbert Ueberschaer, who died in 2011. Two reflective outer movements frame a virtuosic middle movement.

Five brief selections from György Kurtág’s Signs, Games and Messages and Telemann’s violin Fantasia No.1 in B-flat Major, played here in E-flat to allow for identical relationships between the strings, complete a terrific CD, with Morrison in complete technical and musical control throughout.

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