Picture this: the British viola virtuoso Lawrence Power portraying a classic sea mariner, breathing life into the late 18th-century verse of English Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge with his 416-year-old Amati instrument as his storytelling companion.

Such was the scene in Paris in January when Power, 49, gave the French premiere of the Viola Concerto composed by his friend Garth Knox at the Société Française de l’Alto’s 50th International Viola Congress. The performance took place a few weeks after Power gave the world premiere of this same rollicking piece for viola and strings – co-commissioned by the Australian Chamber Orchestra – in Bern, Switzerland.

Lawrence Power. Photo © Jack Liebeck

Knox, who was born in Dublin and now lives in Paris, was in the audience that January evening at the Conservatoire National Supérieur d’Art Dramatique. He had taken inspiration for the composition from Coleridge’s action-packed poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, in which the titular seaman uses his crossbow to shoot an albatross, symbolically likened to a sacred Christian soul.

“Garth has come up with a really beautiful, theatrical piece that is going to be great to take on...