Works by Tertis, Bowen, Brahms, Bridge, Schumann, Vaughan Williams et al (trans. Tertis et al)
Timothy Ridout (viola), Frank Dupree, James Baillieu (piano)
Harmonia Mundi HMM905376.77 128:00 mins (2 discs)
If violists owe Lionel Tertis an inescapable debt of gratitude, with this release Timothy Ridout repays those dues handsomely. Inspired by the violinist Fritz Kreisler – and arguably doing for the viola what his contemporary Casals, also born in 1876, was accomplishing for the cello – Tertis set about raising the instrument’s profile, in the process tackling the problem of solo repertoire head-on through commissioning, composing, and arranging. Self-taught and a latecomer (he didn’t take up the instrument until he was 19), Tertis’s achievement is roundly celebrated across two discs, each with a stand-out pianist.
Bookending the tribute are two landmark sonatas: one premiered in 1905 and dedicated to Tertis by the young York Bowen, the other by Tertis’s sometime pupil Rebecca Clarke, who composed it at the end of the First World War. Other original compositions include Frank Bridge’s haunted Pensiero and a substantial, big-boned Rhapsody by Elgar’s friend and confidant WH Reed. Then there’s First Meeting: Souvenir, Eric Coates’s tender pen portrait performed in a new transcription by conductor John Wilson – who restores the original key, thereby accentuating its smouldering, dark-hued nostalgia.
A few interlopers aside, the programme in effect takes the temperature of early 20th-century English chamber music, admitting miniatures by Wolstenholme and Tertis to broaden the scope. Toothsome arrangements muster an affectionate, schmaltz-light account of Kreisler’s Liebesleid ahead of a stylish performance of Praeludium & Allegro – a flamboyant injection of Baroque ‘pasticherie’ to end disc one on an ebullient note.
Irresistible, too, is the stoic nobility conjured by Fauré’s Elégie, in which Ridout’s colours are wonderfully nuanced, and his careful restraint allows Frank Dupree’s pianism to shine with translucent luminosity at the start of the middle section.
The two sonatas, however, steal the show, Ridout surrendering to their indefatigable underpinning volatility. And together with Frank Dupree in the Bowen, and James Baillieu who shoulders the Rebecca Clarke, Ridout nurtures readings that seethe with fiery, dramatic insight, voluptuous passion and ear-grabbing empathy.
C minor turbulence is met with protean resolve as Bowen, fresh out of music college and filled with the intoxicated ardour of a young composer flexing his muscles, makes bedfellows of Grieg, Brahms and Elgar, as he wrestles to forge his own voice. In the Finale – broached with unstoppable aplomb by Ridout and Dupree – the music husbands its most intense resources for a passage resolutely marked fff molto vibrato. Rebecca Clarke, meanwhile, whips up a scherzoof impishly teasing vivacity; and while never losing sight of the bigger picture, Ridout and Baillieu boldly interrogate every shifting refinement of the first movement’s complex skein of introspection, ruggedness and gossamer solo asides.
From imposing sonatas to salon bonbons, these recordings constitute a deft salute not just to Tertis the man and multi-faceted musician, but also to his enduring legacy which lives on in distinguished successors – not least among them Timothy Ridout himself.