I recently heard from my friend and colleague Sharon Chung who is about to start an interesting summer viola project. A while back she came across a huge stash of viola etudes by a composer that I (and probably most people) have never heard of: Johannes Palaschko. Over the summer Sharon is planning to learn and record a new Palaschko etude every day.
Palaschko was a German composer and violinist/violist, he lived 1877-1932; he studied with the famous violinist Joseph Joachim, and he wrote over 200 viola etudes and 500 violin etudes! This is the first I've ever heard of Palaschko or his etudes and I'm looking forward to Sharon's project. You can follow along on at The Palaschko Project. And if you're interested in playing some Palaschko etudes yourself you can find quite a lot of them on IMSLP.
She will kick things off tomorrow, June 1!
