Johann Sebastian
BACH (1685-1750)
Chaconne (Partita n° 2, BWV 1004)
[14.15]
Aria "Come Sweet Death" (Cantata
BWV 191 / Arr. L. Tertis) - two versions
[2.53 + 2.31]
Adagio from Toccata in C major
(Arr. L. Tertis) [2.38]
Nicola PORPORA
(1686-1768)
Air [2.30]
Erich Wolfgang
KORNGOLD (1897-1957)
Hornpipe (From Much Ado About Nothing,
op. 11 [1.46]
Ernö von
DOHNANYI (1877-1960)
Sonata for violin and piano in C sharp
minor op. 21 [16.03]
Giuseppe TARTINI
(1692-1770)
Fugue en D (Arr. F. Kreisler) [3.13]
Franz SCHUBERT
(1797-1828)
Nacht und Träume (Lied), D827
(Arr. L. Tertis) [2.55]
Andante and Allegro moderato from the
Sonatina n° 3 [7.26]
Du bist die Ruh' (Lied), D.776 (Arr. L.
Tertis) [3.07]
Joseph SULZER
(1850-1926)
Sarabande (Air on the G string) for
violin/violoncello and piano, op. 8 [2.39]
Antonin DVORAK
(1841-1904)
Slavonic Dance No.1 in G minor (Arr.
F. Kreisler) [2.51]
Songs My Mother Taught Me [Gypsy Songs
op. 55 (Arr. Walter)] [2.25]
Anton Stépanovitch
ARENSKY (1861-1906)
Berceuse (Arr. L. Tertis) [3.33]
Fritz KREISLER
(1875-1962)
La Gitana [2.40]
Preludium and Allegro [4.27]
Gabriel FAURE
(1845-1924)
Après un rêve (Arr. L.
Tertis) [2.30]
Ernest GUIRAUD
(1837-1892)
Mélodrame [3.07]
William WOLSTENHOLME
(1865-1931)
Canzona [2.18]
Allegretto The Answer [6.25]
Cyril SCOTT
(1879-1970)
Cherry Ripe [2.40]
Georg Friedrich
HANDEL (1685-1759)
Sonata in F (Adagio and Allegro /
Arr. L. Tertis) [5.51]
Passacaglia from Keyboard Suite No.7 (Arr.
Halvorsen) [7.23] *
Wolfgang Amadeus
MOZART (1756-1791)
Sonata in A (Allegro molto - Thème
and variations / Arr. L. Tertis) [6.56]
Trio in E K.542 (Allegro – incomplete
and Andante) [10.04] *
Sinfonia Concertante in E flat major K.364
[29.55] *
Ludwig van BEETHOVEN
(1770-1827)
Thème and Variations (Arr.
L. Tertis) [6.19]
Felix MENDELSSOHN
(1809-1847)
On Wings of Song (Lied, op. 34 / Arr.
L. Tertis) [2.35]
Romance n° 1 Sweet Remembrance
19 n° 1 "Doux souvenir" (Arr. L. Tertis)
[2.23]
Romance Fleecy Cloud op. 53 n°
2 (Arr. L. Tertis) [2.31]
Romance op. 62 n° 5 "Gondola Song" (Arr.
L. Tertis) [3.14]
Duetto (Arr. L. Tertis) [3.19]
Trio n° 2 in C minor op. 66 [28.35] *
Anton RUBINSTEIN
(1829-1894)
Mélodie en f (Arr. L. Tertis)
[2.40]
Piotr Ilyich
TCHAIKOVSKY (1840-1893)
A Pleading (Arr. L. Tertis) [2.41]
Chanson sans paroles (Arr. F. Kreisler)
[2.12]
Chanson triste (Arr. L. Tertis) [2.31]
Franz LISZT
(1811-1886)
Liebestraum (Arr. L. Tertis) [3.55]
Johannes BRAHMS
(1833-1897)
Minnelied (Arr. L. Tertis) [2.17]
Sonata n° 1 in F minor op. 120 n° 1 [30.36]
Arnold BAX
(1883-1953)
Sonata for viola and piano [19.53]
Frederick DELIUS
(1862-1934)
Sonata for violin and piano n° 2 (Arr.
L. Tertis) [11.32]
Serenade from Hassan [2.47]
Giuseppe SAMMARTINI
(1695-1750)
Sonata in E (Allegretto) [0.38]
Lionel TERTIS
(1876-1975)
Hier au soir [3.05]
Three Sketches : N° 1 Sérénade
- N° 2 The blackbirds - N° 3 The River
[7.40]
TRADITIONAL
(arr. L. Tertis)
Old Irish Air – two versions [3.39
+ 2.32]
Londonderry Air [3.15]
Complainte [2.21]
Old German Love Song [2.42]
Lionel Tertis (viola)
William Murdoch (piano), Arnold Bax (piano),
George Reeves (piano), Ethel Hobday (piano),
Harriet Cohen (piano) and anonymous pianist
Albert Sammons (violin) *
London Philharmonic Orchestra/Hamilton
Harty (Sinfonia Concertante)
This is a veritable
Feast of Tertis. And the appearance
of this four-disc set is a cause of
celebration for admirers of the indomitable
violist in its comprehensive collection
of all his Columbia discs – and, unannounced
on the cover, the single issued side
of his 1947 HMV session. Praise be,
we also get full matrix and issue numbers
as well – vital for this kind of thing,
but which Biddulph is strangely reluctant
to present in its other issues.
Let’s simply survey
what we have; a lot of morceaux, it’s
true, but amongst them some big sonatas.
There’s the Tertis-arranged Dohnányi
C sharp minor, recorded in November
1925 with Bendigo-born William Murdoch
and the Bach Chaconne from 1924. Adding
ballast to the second disc is the Bax,
from a 1929 session and famously unreleased
at the time; Tertis’s pupil Harry Danks
kept the test pressings and they were
originally issued on Pearl. There are
also sonatas by Mozart and Handel in
this second disc. The third of the set
gives us Delius’s Second Sonata in the
Tertis arrangement and the Brahms F
minor, similarly arranged. And the fourth
disc sports one masterpiece after another;
the Mendelssohn C minor Trio, the Sinfonia
Concertante, and the Handel-Halvorsen
Passacaglia – not to mention the bonus
of a previously unissued performance
by the Chamber Music Players (Sammons,
Tertis, Murdoch) of part of a 1929 recording
of Mozart’s Trio in E, K542. The first
disc also houses a previously unreleased
piece by Korngold.
So what we have here,
in effect, is the most important body
of recordings made by the most important
violist of the first half of the twentieth
century. A few words may be in order
to direct your interest. The Bach Chaconne
was one of the two most important recordings
of the piece made in the 1920s – the
other was by Isolde Menges. It has a
heroic and vibrant intensity and notwithstanding
the fact that Tertis may subsequently
have come to regret some portamenti
they were part of his emotive arsenal
and are deployed with loving passion.
Malcolm Sargent turns up as accompanist
in the 1925 Bach Come, Sweet Death/Porpora
Aria disc – this was a full decade before
he and Tertis (and most of the orchestral
musicians in Britain) came to blows
over some unusually fatuous remarks
the conductor made about giving one’s
"life’s blood" working in
symphony orchestras.
Happily we can distract
ourselves first with the Korngold Hornpipe
from Much Ado About Nothing –
only 1.46 but that’s unpublished
1.46. It sports a very curious matrix
number – T 1709 4a. We can also listen
to the Dohnányi – a very valuable
thing, this, as it was last around on
Claremont, the South African label.
Listen to the passionate, declamatory
sweep, the elastic rhythmic sense –
and marvel at the very finely recorded
piano and the exemplary balance between
Tertis and Murdoch. Lest one thinks
Tertis a master simply of huge tone,
luscious portamenti, continuous Kreisler
vibrato and outsize romanticised gesture
try his own composition, Hier au
soir – it’s truly delicate with
finely reduced dynamics.
Amongst the other smaller
things in this first disc is the Elman
favourite, Sulzer’s Sarabande, an apt
choice for Tertis, himself the son of
a Cantor, from whom he always claimed
he derived his sense of legato. He essays
some pieces by his accepted hero, Kreisler
but his Fauré Après
un rêve is too loud and fast.
The second disc is
notable for his Handel and Mozart sonatas
and for the Bax, which makes a striking
conversation piece for those who wish
to contrast this performance, with the
composer at the piano, with William
Primrose’s 1937 set, which featured
Bax’s mistress, pianist Harriet Cohen.
Tertis’s own Three Sketches stretched
over two discs and they couldn’t have
sold that well because they’re not so
easy to come across these days. They
were rather hollowly recorded for June
1927 but these late Romantic, very late
nineteenth century pieces are charmers.
As with many contemporary performances
of the Londonderry Air, Tertis
doesn’t hang about.
Disc Three opens with
the Delius Sonata. This had already
been recorded for Columbia by its dedicatee
Albert Sammons with Evlyn Howard Jones
at the piano in a late acoustic, so
Columbia must have relished the opportunity
to issue a Tertis-arranged electric
five years later. Clearly things didn’t
go smoothly. Sammons and Howard Jones
had already been into the studios to
set down their recording of the First
Delius sonata – never issued because
May Harrison and Arnold Bax had beaten
them to it for HMV - and Tertis duly
joined the pianist a week or so later
for their recording of the Second. Now
Howard Jones may have been a friend
of Delius’ and a first call Delius sonata
partner for Sammons but he had a mind
of his own. Tertis was equally capable
of causing a scene and whatever transpired
the recording was scrapped and Tertis
returned three days later trailing the
excellent but doubtless more emollient
pianist George Reeves. The results were
a success but I’d love to have been
a fly on the wall when Tertis and Howard
Jones got going – if that’s what they
did.
Disc Three also houses
the fabulously masculine Kreisler Preludium
and Allegro – muscular and vivid – and
a very warmly aerated Liebestraum. His
friend, the blind organist Wolstenholme
is well represented and there are some
remakes as well; the Old Irish Air of
1930 replaced the earlier December 1925
version and 1928’s Londonderry Air was
swiftly replaced by a 1930 version and
both are here, as is the 1947 HMV Bach
Come, Sweet Death. The Brahms
F minor with Harriet Cohen shows him
in all his masculine finery, huge tone
and lavish portamenti, and will remind
aficionados that Tertis had recorded
this sonata with Ethel Hobday on an
acoustic Vocalion set. It is a matter
of lasting regret that the other Brahms
sonata recording, with Solomon in 1947,
remains unissued; parts of it apparently
survive but a torso only. Some of the
sides on disc three show that Columbia
was at a bit of a loss to know what
to do with Tertis – two discs featured
him with a lamentable salon band and
his Dvořák Songs My Mother
Taught Me is probably the nadir
of this session.
The last disc hosts
that Handel-Halvorsen Passacaglia, probably
the most heroically conceived solo violin-viola
disc ever recorded; Sammons and Tertis
are incomparable here. They and Arnold
Bax had gone into the Columbia studios
in May 1929 and the string players warmed
up with this before Tertis and Bax got
down to the composer’s sonata. The Mendelssohn
Trio is anchored by the splendid Murdoch,
with the two string players pouring
forth golden tone throughout, oscillating
between assertion and expressive floating
of sound; wonderfully fluent and intensely
dramatic in the finale. The previously
unpublished Mozart Trio is a superb
survival. Although Tertis and Sammons
had made a cut version of this for Vocalion
with another pianist, it shows that
Murdoch was the most classically oriented
of the three and that Tertis and Sammons
continued to vest the most romanticised
of spirits on Mozart’s muse; no portamento
was spurned but the effect is one of
(albeit highly romanticised) intimacy
and affecting directness. The same is
true of the famous Sinfonia Concertante
recording, the first on record and made
in 1933. Tempi are elastic, portamenti
pervasive, rallentandi constant; but
above all there is a dialogue between
the two string players of ravishing
tonal complexity and expressive directness.
Leaving aside the notorious Hellmesberger
cadenza what remains imperishable here
is the sound of two great string players
communing together in producing a performance
of intensity and buoyancy; very much
of its time of course but unforgettably
so. I can confirm one thing; Tertis
slightly splits a note in his final
ascending run in the finale but in the
second, unissued take, he doesn’t. It
goes to show that when it came to the
spirit of the music over the letter
of the law, a musician like Tertis would
let split notes go hang.
Tully Potter has put
together a good article in the booklet,
amending some of the details he has
previously published and adding some
useful matters of performance and dating.
I am less happy with the transfers,
which are uniformly over processed.
In every case where I can make a comparison
– Sinfonia Concertante on Naxos and
an earlier Biddulph, Bax and Brahms
on Pearl, the Passacaglia and Mendelssohn
Trio on the previous Biddulph disc,
the results favour the other discs.
This is especially galling in the case
of LAB023 which Biddulph itself produced
using Jon Samuels’s transfers of the
Sinfonia, Passacaglia and Mendelssohn
Trio. Apart from the annoying matter
of a clipped opening piano note in the
Trio this earlier disc is much to be
preferred. The same applies when I tested
my own copies of the 78s with David
Hermann’s transfers, which are allergic
to any shellac crackle. In fairness
this is a widespread aversion and Hermann
is by no means alone so some will welcome
the smoothed down, treble dampened sound.
Obviously I don’t, and can’t. But with
this caveat I should note that you will
have to hunt far and wide to assemble
a collection such as this and you will
have to have a Goldring Lenco GL75 –
or similar – to play the 78s on, because
you will find that most of the smaller
pieces have never been reissued, either
on LP or on CD.
Given the comprehensive
nature of this collection the next plea
is for Tertis’s Vocalions to be transferred.
These have been shamefully treated.
If you have any interest in Tod Boyd,
Benjamin Dale’s Romance, Brahms with
Ethel Hobday, Dunhill’s Trio with Sammons
and Frank St Leger (later a supremo
at the Met), a Fuchs Duet with Sammons,
Grieg’s Third Sonata with Hobday, Ireland’s
Holy Boy, John McEwen’s Breath o’
June, two Mozart trios, an abridged
Schubert D898 Trio, and much, much else,
then I suggest you lobby Biddulph. And
if anyone has the cylinder recordings
that Tertis always claimed he made around
1900 perhaps he could give me a call.
Jonathan Woolf
BIDDULPH
80216-2 [4 CDs: 79.39 + 70.55 + 76.04 + 79.27]
