For most Elgarians, the existence of Lionel Tertis's transcription of the Cello Concerto for viola is a known fact, but how many have ever heard it? Now, with this recording we all can, and a very fascinating experience it is too. Elgar himself approved it. He told Novello that ''it is admirably done and is fully effective on his instrument'', and he conducted it on more than one occasion.
Fully effective? How many will agree with that, I wonder? The substitution of the viola's lighter and less sonorous tone-quality alters the whole character of the work and serves to emphasize paradoxically, how perfectly the music was imagined and designed for the noble and rich sound of the cello. Listen to the beginning of the first and last movements to hear what I mean—the viola just hasn't the weight for these great pronouncements. Certainly the viola has the melancholy quality which suits the autumnal character of the Concerto, but (in the finale particularly) it sounds plaintive rather than passionately poignant. Nor can it produce those marvellous pizzicatos at the start of the scherzo, where Tertis (or Elgar?.) substituted an arco phrase. One notices the fewest differences in the Adagio.
So does it 'come off'? I suppose so, though I suspect its real importance lies in its having been a major strategic coup in Tertis's campaign to reinstate the viola, its musical value is chiefly that of a curiosity. The work itself becomes less personal more of a virtuoso classical concerto. Where there can be no argument is over the superb playing of the Israeli violist Rivka Golani, the sympathetic direction of the orchestral score by Vernon Handley and the excellence of the recording.
Handley also conducts Elgar's Three Characteristic Pieces, performed here in their full orchestration. The Bax Phantasy is another Tertis piece. As it was written specifically for the viola, one can listen without, as one does in the Elgar, mentally transposing its sound throughout. It is based on Irish folk-tunes and for two-thirds of its course I thought I would be able to hail a glorious discovery. So I can—''up to a point, Lord Copper''—but in the finale Bax simply doesn't know when to stop, as he so often didn't, and one longs to cry out ''That's enough!''. A splendid disc, though—and some company must lock Miss Golani into a studio and not let her out until she has recorded Walton's Viola Concerto.'