As far as Deborah Lander is concerned, Lexington Philharmonic Orchestra fans are going to hear the chocolate of instruments Friday night.

“Anyone who plays the viola will tell you that the reason they take it up is because they’ve fallen in love with the sound,” Lander says. “It’s such a fantastic, dark sound, like chocolate - dark chocolate. It’s the best instrument, no question.”

There’s also no question that seeing a solo violist is a bit of a rarity.

The last time a violist stood in front of the Lexington orchestra was when Nokuthula Ngwenyama visited in March 1999. That doesn’t surprise Lander, who will break the instrument’s nearly decade-long drought when she and Philharmonic concertmaster Dan Mason play Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante for Violin and Viola on Friday.

Lander wants to raise the status of the instrument, and she’s in a position to do it.

A native of Australia, she is the first full-time tenured professor to teach viola at the University of Kentucky.

If she has a predecessor, it is beyond the records or the memories of anyone in the UK School of Music.

Before Lander’s arrival, viola students studied with adjunct professor Margie Karp, who also had violin students in her studio.

“Though we’ve had success, there are students who would like a viola professor who is a ­violist,” says Mason, UK’s violin professor. “That’s an important asset in attracting the best students, and it gives us credibility, especially with Deborah’s résumé.”

Growing up in Sydney, Lander played violin until she was 11. That’s when she began studying with a teacher who played viola, and she picked up the instrument, which looks like a violin but is larger and has a deeper sound.

“When I was 13, I remember my father showed me a video of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, and I said, ‘I’m going to play with them,’ and I did,” Lander says. “I was very focused.”

The academy is one of the most widely recorded and heard orchestras in the world, conducted by the legendary Neville Marriner.

First, she joined the Australian Chamber Orchestra when she was 18. She moved to London at 21 and became immersed in England’s storied music scene.

Her primary gig was with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, but in London, “you work non-stop, even if you have a gig with one orchestra.”

London has five full-time orchestras, three full-time opera orchestras and two chamber orchestras. Lander toured and recorded with the Academy frequently while working with ensembles including the English Chamber Orchestra.

For six years, she had ­everything she wanted as a musician, but as a human, she missed one key element.
“After six years, I decided I needed some sunshine in my life,” Lander said. “I arrived in London in November and didn’t see a second of sun until February.”

She left the London fog to return to Australia, where she taught at the University of Newcastle, earned a doctorate and developed the country’s viola curriculum. The latter project had her pouring through more than 800 viola pieces, gorgeous works that she says most people have never heard.

“If you are a viola player, it is your responsibility to play the viola repertoire and promote the viola repertoire,” she says.

Lander says the large Romantic-era orchestra, the setup seen most often today, with its divisions of string, wind and percussion instruments, drove the viola from center stage because it had a hard time being heard.

Even before that, in the string-orchestra era in which ­Mozart composed, the dark viola had trouble being heard over the bright violins. Mason says that in the original performances of Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante for Violin and Viola, the piece he and Lander will perform, the violas were tuned up a half-step because the tighter strings made a brighter sound, and the way Mozart wrote the piece, the D-major tuning allowed the viola to have more open strings, further brightening the sound.

But in ensuing years, the viola’s profile diminished and gained a reputation as the instrument of second-rate violinists.

Speaking to the Herald-Leader before her concert here in 1999, Ngwenyama, the last violist to solo with the Philharmonic, said she was warned as a child that choosing viola over violin would stunt her growth as a musician.

Lander says, “I really think we’re getting beyond that attitude. The world is coming around to understanding that viola players are equally as good.”

The Rodney Dangerfield status, Lander says, has fostered a community and pride among violists whom she encourages in her studio in Lexington.

“Viola players, maybe because we have been marginalized so long, are always happy to meet another viola player,” Lander says.

And happy to get a professor of their own.

Lander now has an office in the UK string program’s Washington Avenue house. She ended up there because the UK School of Music was looking for a viola professor, and after 16 years back home, Lander was looking for a job in the United States, where she could easily travel between the States and Europe.

Sydney, she says, “is an awfully long way from anywhere, even for a big city, so there’s a sense of isolation.”

She wanted to rekindle the professional relationship between herself and the Academy. Since arriving at UK, she already has taken both of the school’s student string quartets to an Academy tour stop in Dallas, where they received coaching and career advice from the orchestra’s principal players. She wants to develop an annual residency at UK for the Academy and says the orchestra’s leadership is “keen on it.”

Mason says he and his UK colleagues had to pick their jaws up off the floor when they read Lander’s résumé, but they decided to go after her even though they knew they wouldn’t be the only school seeking her services.
After her visit, Lander and UK formed a mutual admiration society.

“Neville and the Academy used to tour to university towns all the time, and I love university towns, particularly being the cultural focus of the town,” she says.

In Lexington, she says she found “a perfect combination of big city and small town … not too large, not too small … Northern feel and Southern charm.”

Funny. The same sorts of comparisons come into play when she describes her instrument: “It’s not too high, not too low.”

For Lander, playing viola in Lexington seems to be just right.