Readers of Gramophone have a fair idea that Pablo Casals was born in El Vendrell, Catalonia, on December 29, 1876. They may be unaware that on the selfsame day, in West Hartlepool, the man was born who would do for the viola what Casals did for the cello. He was Lionel Tertis, like Casals a diminutive, single-minded, cantankerous man. Raised in London’s East End, he was the son of a synagogue cantor. ‘My father had a fine tenor voice,’ he recalled in his memoirs, ‘and later on I began to realise how beautiful his phrasing was – he was naturally musical, good music absorbed him, and to him principally I owe my passion for it.’

The family had a piano, which Lionel played from the age of three. He made his public debut aged six, in ‘prodigy’ garb including a black velvet coat and lace collar, at a concert in Highbury, north London, playing a Stephen Heller tarantella. Having left home at 13 to earn his living as a pianist, he was almost 16 before he had saved enough money – by accompanying a blind violinist and playing in a ‘Hungarian’ band and in seaside end-of-the-pier shows, among other things – to fulfil his dream of learning the violin. His studies were financed by gigs in such places as Madame Tussaud’s in London and a Preston ‘lunatic asylum’.

He was 19 when a fellow student at the Royal Academy of Music (RAM), London, Percy Hilder Miles, asked him to play the viola in a quartet. ‘And I did, with an old cut-down instrument at the Academy, very nondescript, but I loved the timbre, I loved the quality from the first moment I studied it, and from that time I worked at it myself, for the simple reason that there were no pedagogues for the viola – it was either a drummer or a pianist that taught it.’

Consider the viola’s status in the 1890s. Paris had one or two good exponents – hence the terrific part in Debussy’s Quartet – but the city’s conservatoire offered no viola class until 1894. The RAM had no viola students as such: the old man who played the viola for orchestral rehearsals was described by the principal, Alexander Mackenzie, as a ‘necessary evil’. String quartets consisted of three violinists, one of whom would be landed with the viola, and a cellist; the exception was the Czech group the Bohemian Quartet, founded in 1892 with ‘King Viola’, Oskar Nedbal.

Having no one to guide him, Tertis worked at the viola on his own, to such effect that he played transcriptions of the Mendelssohn E minor and Wieniawski D minor violin concertos on the viola at RAM concerts, drawing the ire of fiddler Alfred Gibson: ‘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!’

An epiphany came via Fritz Kreisler, first heard in London at two 1902 concerts under Hans Richter, in the Beethoven Violin Concerto and Bruch’s G minor. His continuous vibrato was an ear-opener. ‘For me the experience of hearing him play was like falling in love,’ wrote Tertis. ‘His glowing tone, his vibrato, unique and inexpressibly beautiful, his phrasing, which in everything he played was peculiarly his own, the manly grace of his bow arm, his attitude, at once highly strung and assured, the passionate sincerity of his interpretations … the most heavenly tone-quality and expression I’ve ever heard from any violinist.’ Tertis adapted Kreisler’s vibrato to the viola, keeping his left-hand fingers constantly alive, virtually overlapping the vibrations from note to note. He badgered composers for new pieces: Bax, Vaughan Williams, Bowen and Dale responded.

In the 1920s Tertis travelled to the US and Europe as Britain’s leading string player. Violinist partners in Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante included Albert Sammons (with whom he recorded it), Kreisler, Jacques Thibaud, Samuel Dushkin – and Adolf Busch, who (as reported in 1940) rejected Tertis’s emendations and his reasoning: ‘Don’t you and I know more about the technique of the violin than Mozart?’

The late 1920s saw the creation of two Hindemith viola concertos and others by Milhaud, Serly and Walton. It was typical of Tertis that he preferred to adapt Elgar’s Cello Concerto – the composer gave the result his blessing. Tertis’s taste was tethered to late Romanticism. He did not take to Hindemith’s music (nor to his playing); played Clarke’s superb Viola Sonata only once; and when in his old age he heard Paul Doktor playing Reger’s solo Suites, which had been terra incognita until then, he was astounded by them. Although Walton had written his Viola Concerto with him in mind, Tertis sent it back to the composer – but he soon repented and went on to perform it a fair amount.

Having retired in 1937, he made a comeback during the war, borrowing a viola from his pupil Eric Coates – but he was no longer the same force as a player. Much of his energy in the latter part of his long life was devoted to developing a Tertis model viola, first with Arthur Richardson of Crediton and then with other luthiers. He is commemorated by the Lionel Tertis International Viola Competition, recently resuscitated after a six-year hiatus.

Some of Tertis’s legacy is heard but not seen. Working with Sir Thomas Beecham, he did much to improve standards of orchestral string playing (the viola sections of UK ensembles were full of his pupils and their pupils). His playing was marked by all-pervasive portamento, and he later came to regret this aspect of his Bach Chaconne recording. His legato passages had a tacky, almost gluey effect, as if his well-rosined bow was sticking to the string. His articulation in fast music was exceptional, especially as he favoured a large viola with a strong C string. ‘Tertis always wanted the viola to sound like a young cello,’ said pupil Max Gilbert.

Tertis’s Columbia records include great performances, but one of the best, Bax’s Sonata, failed the ‘wear test’. Others did not sell well: the recording of his viola arrangement of Dohnányi’s C sharp minor Violin Sonata was available only from May 1926 to August 1930. Soon after, 17-year-old Patrick Saul asked for it in a music shop. Told it was withdrawn, and ‘feeling like a child hearing about death for the first time’, he tried the British Museum, to be informed loftily that they did not preserve recordings. So began the odyssey leading in 1955 to the British Institute of Recorded Sound (later the National Sound Archive, housed in the British Library, London).

Defining moments

• 1880 – Piano beginnings

Born West Hartlepool, Co Durham, December 29, 1876, and family having moved to Spitalfields, London, when he was three months old, he starts piano age three. Public debut at six. At thirteen starts earning living as pianist

• 1892 – College (and violin) studies begin

Enters Trinity College of Music, London, studies with RW Lewis (piano), Gordon Saunders (harmony), Bernhard Carrodus (violin). 1894: unhappy spell at Leipzig Conservatory. 1895: enters Royal Academy of Music, London, studies violin with Hans Wessely

• 1896 – Finds his destiny

First plays viola, in Beethoven Quartet Op 18 No 1. 1897: joins Queen’s Hall Orchestra, second violins. 1900: first viola recital, Queen’s Small Hall; becomes RAM viola professor. 1901: premieres McEwen Viola Concerto. 1903: Proms debut, in Proms premiere of Mozart Sinfonia concertante with Wessely. 1906: replaces Oskar Nedbal for British tour with Bohemian Quartet

• 1908 – Making his way

Bowen Viola Concerto premiere, abortive US trip. 1909: principal in Sir Thomas Beecham’s orchestra, later string coach. 1911-12: soloist with Concertgebouw Orchestra, Amsterdam, under Willem Mengelberg. 1916: visits Great War front line with Eugène Ysaÿe

• 1917 – Chamber Music Players ensemble formed

With Albert Sammons, Felix Salmond, William Murdoch. 1919: first Vocalion records. 1921: Bax Phantasy premiere under Albert Coates. 1922: Bax Sonata premiere with composer. 1923-24: Rome concert and US tour sponsored by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge

• 1924 – Early broadcasts, and Columbia firsts

Bax Sonata with Harriet Cohen at ISCM Festival, Salzburg; first BBC broadcast; starts recording for Columbia. 1925: premiere of Vaughan Williams’s Flos campi. 1930: Elgar ‘Viola’ Concerto premiere, Brussels; composer conducts London performance

• 1937 – Brief retirement at age 60

Starting day after Walton Concerto and Harold in Italy under Ernest Ansermet. 1939: comeback. 1950: CBE. 1953: Cinderella No More autobiography. 1956: revisits US. 1958-59: South Africa tour

• 1966 – The last chapter begins

RPS 90th birthday dinner, Sir John Barbirolli among speakers. 1974: publication of expanded autobiography My Viola and I. 1975: dies London, February 22

Recommended recording

‘The Art of Lionel Tertis’

Lionel Tertis va Arnold Bax, Harriet Cohen, George Reeves pfs (Heritage)

This compilation, recorded 1924-33 and originally released on Pearl, is the only way to get Tertis’s historic account of Bax’s Sonata with the composer at the piano: his attack in the scherzo is like a trumpet. Bach’s Chaconne, Brahms’s F minor Sonata with Harriet Cohen and Delius’s Sonata No 2 are all inimitably played.