Teng Li, principal viola, declares ‘there is so much pride in this orchestra’

After serving for more than 20 years successively as principal viola of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and Los Angeles Philharmonic, Teng Li knew what it was like to play with a top-level orchestra. But she was nonetheless struck by what she discovered when she served as guest principal viola with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in April 2023. ‘

“There is such pride in this orchestra,” she said. “They are ranked as one of the greatest orchestras in the world, but I love how everybody still takes each concert very seriously. They are constantly trying to raise the bar.”

Indeed, Li was so impressed by the orchestra at large and inspired in particular by the CSO’s viola section that she decided to audition that same spring to be the ensemble’s principal viola, and she was offered the position in September 2023. Her hiring was announced in June 2024, and it became official at the beginning of the 2024-25 season.

Audiences will have an opportunity to experience Li in the spotlight when she makes her CSO solo debut during the ensemble’s season-opening concerts Sept. 18-19. She will join violinist and conductor Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider in Mozart’s Sinfonia concertante for violin, viola and orchestra.  

She described the 1779 work as a rare chance in an orchestral setting for the viola to pair with another soloist in a musical dialogue. “I love the piece very much,” Li said, “and I cannot thank Mozart enough for composing this piece for such an unusual combination of instruments. Not many composers wrote for solo violin and viola with orchestra.”

Because Szeps-Znaider will serve as the violin soloist, he will not conduct in the traditional manner on the podium but will instead provide cues and other necessary indications as he plays. “It’s going to be much more like chamber music, and we’re just going to react to each other a lot,” Li said.

Li has served as a soloist in this piece before elsewhere, but this is first time she is incorporating the scordatura technique that Mozart specified for the viola, which calls for tuning each of the four strings of the instrument a half step higher. At the same time, the viola part is written in D major instead of the E flat for the rest of the instruments.

“It’s quite the musical challenge,” she said. “It’s completely changed all of my fingerings, and as I practice, I’m experiencing all these overtones that I’ve never heard before. It’s going to add very special colors to an already beautiful and joyful piece.”

“I love the piece very much, and I cannot thank Mozart enough for composing this piece for such an unusual combination of instruments." — Teng Li on Mozart’s Sinfonia concertante

A native of Nanjing, China, Li has been around stringed instruments virtually her entire life. Her eager father, a “huge” classical-music lover, gave her a violin when she was 2, and she began lessons three or so years later with a violist. “I doubt if it was because of that,” she said, “but when I played the violin, a lot of people commented that my sound was similar to a viola sound.” That observation presaged what was to come.

After pursuing an elementary-school curriculum at Beijing’s Central Conservatory of Music, she auditioned to continue in its middle-school program, but there was an unprecedented overflow of qualified violin students. Not wanting to simply turn these young talents away, one of the school’s violin professors suggested converting some of them to violists, and he recommended Li because of her strong hands and already dark tone. “So that’s how I changed to viola,” she said.

When she was learning the violin, it presented what seemed like endless technical problems and too many “squeaking sounds,” but she immediately felt more comfortable with the viola. “I felt like I could make music,” she said. “It just agreed with me more.”

She was 12 then, and, four years later, she headed to the United States for studies at the respected Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia with Michael Tree, Joseph de Pasquale and Karen Tuttle. “The school helped us think about music so differently than the traditional kind of training that we got in China,” she said of her early studies and that of her fellow students from China.

Li was still a student at Curtis when she landed her first post as principal violist of the Toronto Symphony, a position she held for 14 seasons. For the first year, she split her time between finishing her studies in Philadelphia and playing in the Toronto orchestra. “There were a lot of very early-morning flights,” she said with a laugh.

In addition to her orchestral work, Li also has devoted considerable time to chamber music. In 2015, she and two other musicians released an album titled “1939,” which featured works by five composers who were written around the beginning of World War II. “The violist Teng Li brings a ripe, burnished sound and elegant command of phrasing to a fascinating program,” wrote music critic Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim in a review in the New York Times.

That same year, she and three other members of international orchestras formed the Rosamunde Quartet, which is set to appear at the Ravinia Festival on Oct. 23 as part of its fall/winter series at Bennett Gordon Hall. The group performs together two or three times a year; its seven-city tour in March included stops at the University of Michigan and Chamber Music Pittsburgh.

The four musicians wanted to perform some of the masterpieces of the string-quartet repertoire like Franz Schubert’s String Quartet No. 13 in A Minor, Rosamunde. D. 804, Op. 29, the work for which the group was named. They don’t typically get a chance to play such pieces with the limited rehearsal time available to groups assembled on the spot at summer events like two that the violist regularly attends – the Sarasota Music Festival in Florida and Morningside Music Bridge, a festival in Calgary, Alberta.

“It’s very important for me, personally,” Li said of her tenure with the Rosamunde. “In the last 10 years, it really has helped me evolve as a musician.”

In addition to her performing, the violist has also devoted considerable time to teaching in each of the cities she has held orchestral posts, including the Colburn School in Los Angeles and University of Toronto. She joined the music faculty of Roosevelt University’s Chicago College of Performing Arts when she took up her CSO duties.

The violist feels a debt to all the teachers and fellow musicians who have helped her along the way in her career, and she wants to pay it back by guiding others. “Not all of my information will work for everyone,” she said, “but if I can help in any way, even by just being supportive, then hopefully that can benefit a student.”

Li’s CSO appointment was overseen by Riccardo Muti, Music Director Emeritus for Life. She replaced Charles Pikler, who served as principal viola from 1986 through 2017. Li-Kuo Chang, who held the assistant principal viola chair from 1988 through 2023, also served as acting principal viola in 2017-23.

She occupies the Paul Hindemith Principal Viola Chair, named in 2015 for the famous 20th-century composer, who was also a noted violist. “I’m very flattered, honestly, because he was such an important person in the history of the viola," she said. Hindemith made the first of his three sets of appearances with the CSO in 1938, as part of a program with three of his works, including Der Schwanendreher (The Swan Turner), a 1935 concerto for viola and small orchestra with Hindemith as soloist.

While a member of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Li took part in a 2020 festival titled The Weimar Republic: Germany, 1918-1933, which featured the music of Kurt Weill and Hindemith. That experience deepened her understanding of Hindemith and helped her appreciate even more his viola-centered sonatas and chamber music.

As she begins her second season with the CSO, she couldn’t be happier with her decision to join the ensemble. 

“It’s exactly as I imagined, and it’s made me very happy,” she said. “I love the programming, the challenge of playing in this ensemble, and I feel like every week there is just so much inspiration onstage.”