JAVS Summer 2026

Featured Article

The Viola Behind the Iron Curtain, Part IV: Original Soviet Scale Systems and Etude Books for Viola by Nethanel E. Pollak, DMA

viola repertoire, much of which was created by—or inspired by—leading Soviet violists who were also active pedagogues. Therefore, this pedagogical tradition deserves closer examination by violists seeking to incorporate Soviet works into their repertoire and to approach performance in a stylistically informed manner. Soviet Viola Pedagogy To begin this pedagogical discussion, it is important to highlight the specific features of viola education in the USSR and place them within a broader context. Maya Pritzker’s 1991 article on the Soviet music education system outlines the structure of this complex and highly organized system, in which the viola functioned like any other classical instrument beginning in the 1960s. The system included carefully designed curricula in performance, music history, and music theory, regular performances and examinations that enabled systematic assessment, as well as on-campus competitions and advancement opportunities. 3 Her article, however, does not address pedagogical approaches to the development of instrumental technique, and other English-language viola sources appear to offer no information on this subject as well. From a different perspective, the Russian viola centered historiographic sources discussed in Part I of this series largely follow the narrative of “Borisovsky as the founding father of the Soviet viola school.” This emphasis is justified given Vadim Borisovsky’s monumental contribution as a teacher and mentor to future generations of leading viola pedagogues. Yet it tends to overshadow earlier foundations of viola pedagogy in the USSR. For example, the first Soviet viola etude collection was not written by Borisovsky, but by his colleague at the Moscow Conservatory—M. Terian (1905–1987)—who later became artistic director of the

Introduction This article is the fourth and final installment in a series published in the Journal of the American Viola Society presenting a newly completed corpus of research on original viola repertoire from the Soviet era. 1 Following the introductory article, which summarized the historiography of the Soviet viola community and presented quantitative findings from the catalogue of Soviet viola works, the following two installments examined two distinct genre-specific phenomena identified during the research: works inspired by and modeled after Dmitry Shostakovich’s Sonata for Viola and Piano , op. 147 (1975), and short-scale works for viola and piano that may be classified as ‘socialist-realist.’ This final installment addresses Soviet viola pedagogy—a crucial component in the development of viola music in the USSR and across the Communist Bloc, with the aim of completing the panoramic overview of the viola behind the Iron Curtain. The first section briefly outlines key milestones in the history of Soviet viola pedagogy and surveys the two earliest known pedagogical sources for viola: by M. Terian (1936) and M. Reitikh (1940). Following an overview of the remaining documented pedagogical material for viola produced in the USSR, we then examine the work of Georgyi Bezrukov and Konstantin Oznobishchev from the later Soviet period. This discussion includes a scale system (1987) and an extensive collection of etudes (1973; second edition examined here from 1988), which became a standard pedagogical resource after its publication and has continued to transmit the fundamentals of the Soviet viola school to later generations. 2

As discussed in previous installments of this series, the Soviet school of playing lies at the core of Soviet

Journal of the American Viola Society / Vol. 42, Summer 2026 Online Issue

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