A concert star born in Hartlepool
OrchestrasAny guesses?
He came into the world in West Hartlepool, the child of Polish-Jewish immigrants, and entered the Royal Academy of Music as a violinist.
He came out a violist, the first to make a solo career on the instrument.
He died 50 years ago next month at the prodigious age of 98.
Hartlepool have booked a concert in his memory this month.
Go on, it’s on the tip of your tongue.
Lionel Tertis, my Grandfather made the first Tertis Viola for him in 1948
On the dating given here, he only started playing the famous Tertis viola (much bigger than previous models) in his seventies. Is that correct? If so, I wonder why he changed so late.
Tertis had been frustrated in the tone of standard Violas and reached out to my Grandfather who was a draughtsman and amateur Luthier to make a Viola using his dimensions . I believe he made 3 in total before Arthur Richardson became involved. He won a prize at the International Luthiers Competition in The Hague , Netherlands with this prototype. A History of this collaboration is all housed at Trinity Laban, Greenwich, including letters, photos, and scaled diagrams.
Graham the Tertis Model viola at 16 3/4 inches was both larger and smaller than violas of his youth because unlike violins there never was a standardized size. Many violas in Tertis’s youth were just slightly larger than a violin and the C string sounded like a stuff-up nose. You can still buy violas like that. But the big 17″ and 18″ violas (some of them cut down from antique instruments such as the viola da braccio or viola d;amore or even small gambas) are like having a coffee table under your chin and it looks like your left hand is in the next county (not to mention the near impossibility of finding a viola case they can fit in). The essence of the Tertis Model is to find a middle ground that can balance tonal power with dexterity and agility. Length and thickness of the body have a role to play in both factors. (Type of chinrest and shoulder pad also have roles to play in the dexterity department.)
According to Tertis’s autobiography, the luthier Arthur Richardson made many violas for Tertis as he refined his ideas — he calls these “experiments” — and the earliest experimental Tertis Model seems to have been 1938. Drawings were made by C Lovett Gill and he himself built 7 Tertis Model violas but not perhaps all of the same version of the Model.
Eventually I have to assume the experiments were over and “the” Tertis Model was arrived at. This might explain the 1948 date given by Richard as regards his grandfather. Perhaps Richard could provide more details?
To reach the ultimate goals Tertis had, there were other experiments of course, most famously the Erdesz Model that Rivka Golani plays or played. Its approach was to change the basic shape of the upper part of the body so that it is not symmetrical on both sides of the fingerboard but is shaped to create a lane so that the left hand can more easily reach higher on the fingerboard without the body of the viola getting in the way, sometimes called the “cutaway” version. It looks a little like a viola designed by Salvador Dali in his drooping watch phase. If I recall correctly other parts of the body were changed so that the interior volume was still large enough to produce warmth and volume.
I’ve seen some but never played one.
Not all violas made by Otto Erdesz follow that pattern. Some are conventional looking.
Better ask him!!!
Richard beat me to it; Lionel Tertis. He was part of that amazing circle of musicians that gathered at the home of Muriel Draper and her husband Paul to eat dinner and make music, and in his autobiographical “My Young Years,” Arthur Rubinstein wrote about his first encounter with Tertis at a meal at Draper’s after which Jacques Thibaud suggested music, and with Thibaud and Albert Sammons on violins, Tertis on viola of course, and Augustin Rubio on cello — an all-star group circa 1913 — they tackled the Debussy Quartet. Here is what Rubinstein recalled over half a century later:
“From the first bars on, I became aware of a new element in their ensemble, a sonority I had never heard before. The sound came to light by the powerful, singing, soulful tone of the viola as played by Lionel Tertis. Here was one of the greatest artists it was my good fortune to know and to hear.”
The same night Rubinstein played the Brahms Piano Quartet in c minor: “The sound of his [Tertis’s] solo in the first movement still rings in my ears. It was a glorious night of music.”
Tertis shared a birthday with his great friend Casals and they were planning a joint concert for their 90th birthdays and Tertis composed a duo for viola and cello of 26 variations on a theme by Handel for the event, but Tertis felt no longer able to play when the date arrived. He gave up all public performing in 1964 — at age 87!
William Primrose, who became the best-known violist in the United States, acknowledged his debt to Lionel Tertis. In his memoir WALK ON THE NORTH SIDE, Primrose wrote: “Tertis was an indomitable man….For those of us who followed in his train, our task was rendered all the more easy and rewarding because of him.”
A story told by Lionel Tertis in his book “My Viola and I” [pages 17 and 18] gives perspective to his beginnings on the viola:
In 1897, a fellow student lent me a Guadagnini viola….and from that moment I became more than ever an enthusiast, resolved that my life’s work should be the establishment of the viola’s rights as a solo instrument.
In those days when it was the rarest thing to hear a viola solo, the upper range of the instrument was completely unexplored. Players from the time rarely climbed higher than the second ledger line in the treble clef! To counteract this neglect of the higher registers I resolved to give demonstrations to show the improvement in the quality of those higher tones that could be achieved by persistent practice in them. As a student at the Royal Academy of Music I was able to accomplish this by playing the Mendelssohn and Wieniawski D minor concertos (of course a fifth lower but exactly as written for the violin) at two of the fortnightly students’ concerts there. The morning after my performance of the Mendelssohn, I met Alfred Gibson who was for a time violist of the Joachim Quartet. Evidently he had been present at the concert for he greeted me with a menacing look and exploded: “I suppose the next thing is, you will be playing behind the bridge! The viola is not meant to be played high up – that is the pig department!” I felt like replying: “It probably is on your viola but not on mine!” However, that would have been rude coming from a student to a Professor of the Academy.
Timothy Ridout is giving the concert in Hartlepool on 21 Jan (with James Baillieu accompanist). Tertis was born 150 years ago (Dec 1875). The International Lionel Tertis Viola Competition has moved from the Isle of Man to the Glasshouse, Gateshead (formerly The Sage) 19-25 Jan 2025, running concurrently with the Cecil Aronowitz Competition for younger Violists. Ridout won the Tertis competition in 2016.
Golly, I didn’t know that! I, too, became a Monkey (living in the Seaton Carew part of the Borough) and back then West Hartlepool even had the Preston Simpson music scholarship that I received on going to the RMCM. I don’t suppose that still exists. Others came from there as well, but I can’t remember their names. One was the 2nd fiddle in the Edinburgh Stg 4tet sitting next to Miles Baster. Compton Mackenzie was born a Hartlepuddlian, too, but that’s a rather different story! In those days, of course, becoming a professional musician provided an escape from coal mining or ship building, etc., and working class youngsters were helped to get on the ladder and away. Schools had music lessons as well. Things have changed. It’s called Progress.
The Preston Simpson scheme amalgamated with the Sterndale Music Scholarship Scheme for girls in 2010, and the Trust still awards grants for music ( https://www.culturehartlepool.com/the-preston-simpson-and-sterndale-young-musicians-trust/). On another rather different story, West Hartlepool also used to have a very good Rugby Union Football Club playing and beating the top English clubs, until the advent of professionalism in 1995 the when other clubs’ ‘sugar-daddies’ poached the best players at West’s expense. West didn’t have that financial backing. It’s called progress… For anyone interested, a former MP for Hartlepool, Lord Mandelson, is (controversially) to become the UK’s Ambassador to the USA… Wayne Sleep (Ballet Dancer) lived there for 10 years from about age 3. Then there’s the cartoon character “Andy Capp” who lived in Hartlepool.
Interesting and ancient history to Hartlepool – including being the first place on mainland Britain to be bombed during WW1. The Wikipedia entry is an informative summary.
of course – all violists know.
Thank you Mr. Tertis, for putting us on the map.
Lionel Tertis. When my dad, violinist Mischa Mischakoff, visited him, with Jan Clemenson I think, Tertis called him “Young Man”: my father was already in his 70’s and loved it.