JAVS Fall 1998

31

WILLIAM PRIMROSE: A LIFE RECORDED

by Tully Porter

The viola has never before enjoyed the high profile it does today. A handful of mighty soloists are placing the viola on the same level as the violin and cello, and the music being written for it by composers such as Ligeti and Schnittke makes no concessions to the player. Yet it is doubtful whether any of the star viola virtuosi of the 1990s has out stripped the achievement of that characterful Scots pioneer William Primrose. He was not the first great modern violist; before him came Oskar Nedbal, who also had careers as conductor and composer; Lionel Terris, who showed that Kreisler's new technique of con tinuous vibrato could be even more effective on the viola; and Maurice Vieux, whose play ing was the quintessence of French style. Primrose's contribution was to advance viola virtuosity even further, appearing on equal terms with such colleagues as Jascha Heifetz, Isaac Stern, Arthur Grumiaux, Szymon Goldberg, Emanuel Feuermann, and Gregor Piatigorsky. Apart from his sheer dexterity, he drew a veritable rainbow of colors from the instrument, exploiting its plangent middle reg ister in a subtler way than his predecessors. These qualities, backed by a fine tempera ment, also made him an astounding recording artist, providing us with many performances to remember him by. It was on the violin that Bill Primrose made his early reputation. Coming across mentions of his fiddle playing in periodicals of the 1920s, it is intriguing to realize that if his career had taken a different turn, he would be remembered as the successor not of Lionel Terris but ofAlbert Sammons. He was born on 23 August 1904 in Glas gow, the son of John Primrose, an orchestral violinist and violist and a connoisseur of string playing and instruments. John owned a 1735 Niccolo Gagliano, which Bill used in his early career. There was music on his mother's side of the family too: her brother,

Samuel Whiteside, a distinguished Glaswe gian violinist, played several other instru ments, but sadly he drowned when Bill was still very young. The lad began violin lessons at the age of four with Camillo Ritter, a pupil of Joachim and Sevcik, and would have gone on to study with the latter, had it not been for World War I. Primrose was playing in public at twelve and, with Sir Landon Ronald's help, was at the Guildhall School in London at the age of fifteen. He studied there with Max Mossel and made his Queen's Hall debut with Ronald conducting in June 1923, playing Lalo's Symphonie Espagnole and Elgar's Con certo on the borrowed Betts Stradivarius. But he gained most from Ysaye, with whom he spent several summers from 1926, and it was the Belgian master who first sug gested he might turn to the viola. Had Ysaye heard something altoish in the young man's tone, or was he hoping to revive his quartet with Primrose as its violist? Primrose himself was never quite sure, but in 1928 he played Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante in Paris with Lionel Terris and this was the crucial event in his career-though he subsequently tended to skate over the Terris connection, perhaps be cause of their basic disagreements on the vexed questions of viola tone and vibrato, as well as the ideal size of the instrument. Prim rose had always had a soft spot for the viola but Tertis's huge, warm tone showed him the real possibilities of the instrument. By 1930 he was playing the viola in the London String Quartet and by 1935 he was making viola records. He joined Toscanini's NBC Sym phony Orchestra in New York as coprincipal viola in 1937 and went solo in 1941, touring with the lyric tenor Richard Crooks. For a few years he organized the Primrose Quartet (with young Oscar Shumsky, a pupil of Auer and Zimbalist, Ysaye disciple Josef Gingold, and Harvey Shapiro, whose teachers had included Diran Alexanian). He had a long collaboration