I would associate the first disc in this two CD set of British
Viola music with Lionel Tertis but the second is largely the
province of later violists. John McEwen’s 1941 Viola Sonata
is an attractive late work of his. His violin sonatas are more
striking and exploratory but this Viola Sonata explores the
Reel and aspects of melancholy well suited to the more plangent
and deeper instrument. It’s a cliché that the viola
accommodates such sentiments, but McEwen keeps things balanced
via piano tolling, fanfare figures, dextrous folkloric fiddling,
and a well calibrated mix of faster and slower music. His Improvisations
Provençales were composed in 1937 and are written
for the violin, the only time that Louise Williams wields the
instrument on which she was first trained. There are six little
sketches in a set that is strong on characterisation and Francophile
watercolour. Breath o’ June is his earliest work
here, written on the cusp of World War I, and it was a Tertis
favourite. That violist’s recording of it is incomparable.
The final work in the first disc is the major sonata in this
set, Bax’s. I can’t be sure, but listening to this
performance by Williams and David Owen Norris I would be very
surprised indeed had they not listened to Bax’s own recording
of the sonata with Tertis. Williams and Norris take what most
today will find as explosive tempi, especially as performers
have tended to take their lead from the later 78rpm performance
of William Primrose and Harriet Cohen; the Tertis/Bax wasn’t
issued until late in the LP era. The interesting thing is that
the faster the tempo, the more strikingly modernist the work
sounds. No one will ever replicate Tertis’ tempo for the
first movement but this new recording, more than almost any
that I have heard in the digital era, certainly shows how fluid
phraseology, abrupt conjunctions and restless dynamism fully
do the work justice.
The second disc presents works that will be novelties for many
listeners. Elizabeth Maconchy’s tersely succinct 1938
sonata is full of brittle energy, albeit often of the spare
variety, and there are alternately hints of English folklore
in the slow movement and Bartók in the finale. Gordon
Jacob offers more fluent and elegantly turned pleasures, with
an especially beautiful slow movement and a high-spirited finale
which, unexpectedly, is then accompanied by contrasting melancholy
and funereal tread, with piano tolling to the very end. Perhaps,
not so very unexpected given the 1949 date of composition.
Alan Rawsthorne’s Sonata was written around the same time
as Maconchy’s and shares some of its tensile qualities.
It’s less likeable as a work, though its harmonic implications
are very much more complex, and it strikes a decidedly knotty
note at times. It’s testing for the viola’s intonation
and it’s a testing work for a duo’s ensemble as
well. It’s certainly the most intellectually demanding
work in the programme, through Kenneth Leighton’s outstanding
Fantasia on the name BACH is strikingly conceived.
Its contrapuntal lines moves seamlessly, fluidly but rigorously
throughout, and it represents one of the finest achievements
of this release to bring it so imaginatively to light in so
conspicuously fine a performance. One shouldn’t, however,
overlook Robin Milford’s Four Pieces of 1935, with
their fresh and charming lyric gifts.
Jonathan Woolf
see also review by Michael
Cookson
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Louise Williams (viola, violin)