Radio Review

The poet Ruth Padel, a viola player since the age of 13, devoted The Essay (Radio 3) to her instrument. Initially a less than keen player, her teenage commitment was influenced, she admitted, by the early offer of £5 for playing in a recital. Violas, she went on, "are about being between, being outshone", and are despised by the more "upmarket" strings in an orchestra. And then there are the jokes, thousands of them, such as: "How was counterpoint invented? Two viola players were trying to play the same tune."

All of this was just an attempt at even-handedness, however, and once honor was satisfied her words became lyrical and soft, a love letter. Playing the viola in an orchestra, she said, is to "stand in the heart of the rustling forest ... it is all about listening".

Nowadays she makes her living by writing, but sees this work as "the viola still - it's the inner voice you carry round with you, heavy, awkward and fragile, a thing on which you have to have to wrestle with the tuning". Children, she said, hate the slog involved in learning an instrument - but she'd shown, beautifully, the value of doing so.