‘PEOPLE WANT TO HEAR SOMETHING DIFFERENT’

Timothy Ridout is the latest in a line of brilliant British violists that stretches back to Lionel Tertis. He speaks to Toby Deller about the legacy of this influential musician, his own fight to expand the viola repertoire, and his latest recording – a Tertis celebration

JIYANG CHEN

CREDIT

Perhaps it was ghosts that led Timothy Ridout and me to the site of the old Queen’s Hall in central London. The intended location for our interview having fallen through at the last moment, we relocated to a hotel rooftop bar nearby, only later realising that it occupied the very block where the concert hall once stood. Destroyed during the Second World War, it had been a focal point of English classical music life in the late Victorian and Edwardian period and beyond. It was there that Henry Wood launched the Proms in 1895. Indeed, it was there, in 1930, that Lionel Tertis premiered his transcription for viola of Elgar’s Cello Concerto, with the composer conducting, a piece that Ridout has himself performed and recorded.

His subsequent and latest release for the label Harmonia Mundi, a double album entitled A Lionel Tertis Celebration, is also steeped in the music of that time. ‘I love music from that period,’ says the 28-year-old, who grew up in the decidedly un-Edwardian town of Luton, not far from London. ‘I find it beautiful and charming and passionate and romantic. I think it’s a period, particularly in the history of the viola, when composers really understood the strengths of the instrument and they played to those strengths. Take the York Bowen Viola Sonata no.1 and Rebecca Clarke’s Sonata. There’s such a great mix of playing with the sonorities of the instrument: beautiful melodies that exploit the lower registers, which are what make the viola so special, then also the more mysterious colours in the higher register are explored. And then there are the opposite, equally mysterious colours at the bottom and the more powerful ones of the top. I really appreciate the way the instrument is used.’

Those two are the most substantial works on the release, which was made in collaboration with pianists Frank Dupree (below) and James Baillieu. The numerous other pieces, reflecting Tertis’s varied contribution to the viola’s literature, include a couple of Tertis originals (Sunset and Hier au Soir); Bridge’s Pensiero and Allegro appassionato; Vaughan Williams’s Six Studies in English Folk Song; and W.H. Reed’s Rhapsody, a work Ridout discovered courtesy of violist and educator Louise Lansdown. There are also transcriptions by Tertis of Brahms, Schumann and Fauré; and transcriptions by Ridout himself, as well as his completion of Bowen’s viola obbligato to Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight’

Piano Sonata.

YAN DYVER

CREDIT

Ridout recording the Elgar concerto with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Martyn Brabbins in 2022

‘Of course, Tertis was a figure I was very much aware of from the moment I became a serious viola player as a teenager,’ Ridout tells me. ‘I started to hear Tertis’s recordings and realised how much of the viola repertoire and the identity of the viola player from the 20th century onwards is thanks to Lionel Tertis. I read his autobiography, My Viola and I, as a teenager, and John White’s 2006 book [Lionel Tertis: The First Great Virtuoso of the Viola] as well, which is a bit more of a substantial read.’ Having listened to Tertis’s interpretations, however, he stresses that he was not tempted to try to copy him. ‘It’s such a different style from modern playing, but the more I listen, the more I appreciate the quality and the amazing virtuosity he had: there’s the Mozart Sinfonia concertante cadenza that he did with Albert Sammons where the viola goes really, crazily high and he’s super clean and in tune.

His way of playing is in a portamento style that’s very different from how we play now, but I really admire it.’

The project’s earliest seed was planted when Ridout first learnt the Bowen sonata as a Lionel Tertis c.1903 14-year-old – it has remained an important piece for him. Later, as a student browsing the library at the Royal Academy of Music (RAM) in London, another took root: ‘I would look through boxes of viola sheet music and see what I could find,’ he recalls. ‘On one particular occasion I found two books of Tertis arrangements and transcriptions – I think it might have been called something like the “Lionel Tertis Legacy” or “Lionel Tertis Collection”. I took them out of the library and learnt some of the pieces. I thought they were lovely arrangements. There were also a couple of original compositions. And there were some pieces by a man called William Wolstenholme, who I hadn’t heard of at that time. He was actually a blind organist, and I think Tertis really admired his music, so on my disc there are a couple of pieces by Wolstenholme.’ He describes these miniatures (Allegretto in E flat major op.17 no.2 and The Question op.13 JIYANG CHEN no.1) as ‘just such a charming time capsule, somehow. I guess it’s in the imagination, as I don’t know what Edwardian Britain was like, but the pieces seem to sum up all the good parts of that time period in this country.’

‘MUCH OF THE REPERTOIRE AND THE IDENTIT Y OF THE VIOLA PLAYER FROM THE 20TH CENTURY ONWARDS IS THANKS TO LIONEL TERTIS’

‘THERE’S NO RE ASON WHY WE AS VIOLA PLAYERS SHOULDN’T HAVE THE SAME BREADTH IN OUR REPERTOIRE AS A SINGER. IF THAT MEANS BORROWING THEN I DON’T SEE ANY PROBLEM WITH THAT’

So, his curiosity for seeking out and exploring original repertoire has not diminished since his student days, whether this is music he tracks down himself or music that comes as a recommendation – as an example he mentions the Kapustin Viola Sonata, which came to him courtesy of Dupree, who had been recording the composer’s piano concertos. Ridout is increasingly following Tertis in being able to commission work, with a concerto from British composer Mark Simpson confirmed and others in discussion. And he has already demonstrated his interest in making transcriptions for himself with his version of Schumann’s Dichterliebe that he recorded with Dupree for the first of his Harmonia Mundi albums A Poet’s Love (2021). ‘People want to hear something different. There have been so many great recordings made in the last century of the same repertoire that I think it’s interesting to look at different material. I love all the main repertoire and I do continue to play it and enjoy it; but a singer, for example, has such a huge repertoire of song and opera, and I think there’s no reason why we as viola players shouldn’t have the same breadth in our repertoire. If that means borrowing then I don’t see any problem with that.’

It may not come as such a surprise to learn, then, that Ridout’s earliest musical enthusiasm as a boy was singing. Although he was taking viola lessons, having chosen the instrument at school following a demonstration by various peripatetic music teachers, his love of singing kept him from any serious dedication to the viola until his voice was changing. ‘I can’t tell you the exact moment when I really started practising seriously, but it was around the age of 12 or 13 – definitely before 14. But for the first four years of having viola lessons, I was way more interested in singing and hanging out with my friends, going to Scouts, shooting air rifles, making fires – those sorts of things. I think I did always go to youth orchestra then, but I was doing quite a lot of activities and there wasn’t that much time left for practising; and when there was time, I’d want to watch telly! But it wasn’t a priority for me at that at age; it wasn’t something I felt that I had to do. There would often be days in a row when maybe I wouldn’t practise and then my parents would say: “OK, you’ve got a lesson tomorrow; you need to practise now.” But they would never push me to practise above the bare minimum requirement on any day. I think that comes from the fact that they both come from musical families and so they never thought that music should be something inflicted on me!’

Once he was practising seriously – and by now needing no encouragement – his progress was rapid. He joined the junior department at the RAM (his teacher was Jonathan Barritt) before entering the senior department to study with Martin Outram. This was followed by three years (2016–19) studying at the Kronberg Academy in Germany, where his teacher was Nobuko Imai, whom he would visit at her home for intensive lessons every few weeks while at other times joining his fellow students in participating in and observing masterclasses with other well-known figures.

‘I’ve had three really big viola playing influences: Jonathan, Martin and Nobuko,’ he tells me. ‘With Martin, the lessons were always so well structured and the week-by-week progress that we were working on was really clear. It was a fantastic grounding for me. In the third and fourth years we worked a lot more on repertoire. Martin also has this amazing knowledge of repertoire, so he always encouraged me to do lots of different things both in a practical sense and in a more poetic sense, giving me ideas about the ways to work on and interpret the music. But the technical structure he gave me at the beginning of my studies was really fantastic.’

It was towards the end of his RAM studies in 2016 that he won the Lionel Tertis International Viola Competition, having previously won the inaugural Cecil Aronowitz International Viola Competition in 2014. That gave him the impetus to seek out the instrument he plays today, a Peregrino Di Zanetto from 1565–75 on loan to him from a patron who prefers to remain anonymous. As a student he had been playing on a 1677 Giovanni Grancino belonging to the RAM and which, as he was graduating, he would very shortly have to return.

He recalls: ‘Having the Tertis competition win behind me, I decided to write to Beare’s. They were so kind to me. They presented me with a table of six or seven beautiful violas, really amazing instruments, some by much more famous makers than Zanetto. They were all good, but I didn’t feel any one was a lot better than the Grancino. Then they said they had one in the safe downstairs, but that it was very big and probably didn’t really suit what I was looking for.

The Zanetto is quite large at 17.2in or 43.7cm – around that. They brought this thing up: it looked massive, like a medieval wardrobe, in a way! Such a different style, and the f-holes were a different shape from those on modern [as in post-Amati] instruments. It felt like the more I experimented with the bow, the more the instrument gave back, the more depth I could find, the more colours I could find.’ (His main bow, which he uses ‘for 99 per cent’ of his concerts is an Alfred Lamy from the first decade of the 20th century, which he bought in 2015, but he also owns a couple of modern bows.)

Ridout admits that the Zanetto was initially uncomfortable to play, but he soon adjusted to its larger size. ‘There’s the obvious thing about intonation,’ he replies when I ask about the initial challenges, ‘but the stop length wasn’t so different because of the position of the f-holes. It was more about how to use the bow because it’s an instrument where, if you don’t use the right hand very well and don’t take care of how you catch the string, it could easily not speak so well.’

Only a few days after picking it up for the first time, he used the instrument to audition successfully for a place on the UK-based Young Classical Artists Trust scheme, dedicated to supporting concert artists in the early stages of their careers.

Other accolades include two years as a BBC New Generation Artist (2019–21) and receipt of the 2023 Young Artist award from the Royal Philharmonic Society. In the US, meanwhile, he was selected by the Bowers Program of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York for a three-year residency that runs until 2024 and for which he joins various other musicians in recitals.

The Peregrino Di Zanetto viola (from 1565–75), which Ridout currently plays

‘IT’S IMPORTANT TO SPEAK UP FOR THE VIOL A AND ITS REPERTOIRE.WITH TRENDS OF PROGRAMMING, THAT DOESN’T SEEM TO HAPPEN NATURALLY WITHOUT A FIGHT’ FLORIAN LEONHARD FINE VIOLINS CREDIT

Ridout during the recording for his 2021 album, A Poet’s Love

YAN DYVER

Ensemble playing accounts for a substantial amount of his live appearances elsewhere. He has been a member of the Teyber Trio – the all-Timothy group completed by violinist Tim Crawford and cellist Tim Posner – since he was in his mid-teens. He has joined other artists in making chamber recordings (namely Mendelssohn string quintets with the Doric Quartet and Mozart piano quartets with Francesca Dego, Laura van der Heijden and pianist Federico Colli) and also now regularly performs alongside elite soloists such as Isabelle Faust and Janine Jansen, as well as Lawrence Power, the violist in whose footsteps he is most obviously treading. ‘I’ve played for him a few times in masterclasses and I also have played quite a bit with him in the Nash Ensemble in sextets and octets and a little bit at the Lockenhaus Festival as well. I think he’s an incredible violist.’ The pair can be heard playing together in an excerpt from Bridge’s Lament (bitly.ws/35mSx), a clip that gives a sense of a baton being shared, if not yet passed on. ‘There are many still-living violists I’ve had lessons from,’ says Ridout, ‘Nobuko being one of the greats, Tabea Zimmermann, Antoine Tamestit– and many others I should probably name. Of course, Lawrence is in London more often, and as a teenager I could often go and watch him and the Nash Ensemble performing. I was always in awe of his incredible ability and imagination.’

Increasingly, Ridout’s own personality is coming to the fore with the prospect of new works alongside an admirable commitment to representing the viola repertoire in all its dimensions, as his recordings so far attest. These range from his debut survey (with pianist Ke Ma) of Vieuxtemps’s complete works for viola (for Champs Hill Records) to Martinů, Vaughan Williams, Hindemith and Britten with the Lausanne Chamber Orchestra (Claves). His Dichterliebe has a contrasting pairing in Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet (in the Borisovsky transcription); and that typically Edwardian Elgar Concerto, meanwhile, is coupled with Bloch’s Suite with its highly characteristic sound world. Similarly, a Wigmore Hall recital a week after we met took in Sally Beamish, Caroline Shaw and György Kurtág as well as Bach and Telemann.

And now that he has also taken on the role of visiting professor at the RAM there is even more opportunity to take on an advocacy role in the manner of the man to whom his new recording pays tribute. ‘I think it’s important, particularly with an instrument like the viola, to speak up for it and its repertoire. With trends of programming, that doesn’t seem to happen naturally without more of a fight. Tertis really fought for the viola. I think he really battled to get his commissions and to get his things done.’