The superfluous viola A Zeneakadémia saját szervezésű programja

Why is a conductor needed when sometimes the orchestra gets along fine without him? What is the role of the score in classical music when many music cultures (folk music, jazz, Gregorian, etc.) managed and still manage without it? What do opera directors do and would they be missed by the singers and audience if they were not there? What is a viola doing in the orchestra if it rarely gets a melody and it does not play the bass either? The Liszt Academy series for young people seeks answers to these and many other questions. On the fourth occasion in the series Liszt Prize-winning viola player Péter Bársony and his Liszt Academy students provide an insight into the fantastic world of the viola. We find out what the viola can do better than the violin (or the cello for that matter); and why it is that although the greatest number of music jokes are about viola players, and they have an apparently subordinate role in music, in fact many great composers – for example, Bach, Mozart, Schubert, Mendelssohn and Hindemith – when they could, all played the viola. Gergely Fazekas, who teaches history of music at the Liszt Academy, is narrator.