JAVS Fall 1998

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with Jascha Heifetz and Gregor Piatigorsky, and during the late 1950s and early 1960s he took part in the magnificent Festival Quartet (with Szymon Goldberg, violin, Nikolai Graudan, cello, and Victor Babin, piano). Among the works he inspired or commis sioned were Britten's Lachrymae and the Bartok, Rubbra, Fricker, and Milhaud (Sec ond) concertos. In private life he enjoyed billiards, cricket, and swimming. After a long illness he died in Provo, Utah, on 1May 1982. Primrose taught a good deal in his last years, when his health and his hearing were impaired; and he left a fair amount of teaching material, the most accessible being Playing the Viola (1988) and the Yehudi Menuhin Music Guide to the Violin and Viola (1976). He also wrote a delightful autobiography, Walk on the North Side. First Modern Violist Primrose is regarded as the first really modern violist. His technique was such that he could play virtually anything put in front of him at sight. On the rare occasions when he was defeated, he would work all night at the piece and present himself the next morn ing, fully in command. His career fell into three periods, corre sponding with his choice of instrument: the violin phase; the first viola phase, lasting until just after World War II, in which he played his father's Brothers Amati with its warm, deep tenorish sonority; and the second viola phase, when he switched to a slightly bigger but more alto-sounding Andrea Guarneri and was unduly influenced by Heifetz. Between the two viola phases he experimented with a new instrument ofWilliam Moennig and also had use of the Macdonald Strad, with its wonderful tone and instantly recognizable diagonal-grained back. Later this instrument would be heard in the Amadeus Quartet in the hands of Peter Schidlof; if you want to hear Primrose play it, turn to his recording of Harold in Italy with Koussevizky (Biddulph or Dutton Laboratories). A live 1939 Harold with Toscanini, on the Music and Arts label, taken from crunchy broadcast acetate discs is a very exciting recording with the solo part played on the Amati (ATRA-614).

Similarly one can roughly divide Prim rose's recordings into three groups. The first, and least significant, is the series he made for Columbia and HMV in the 1920s as a violin ist, using his father's Niccolo Gagliano. These discs show that he was an excellent fiddler with a fine bow arm but not, perhaps, the virtuoso he became. Judge for yourself by hearing the Bach Andante, recorded acousti cally in 1924 and included in Volume II of the Pearl anthology The Recorded Violin (BVA II, three CDs). The second group covers his first decade of recording as a violist, roughly 1935 to 1945, when he was still under the in fluence ofYsaye and was using some sonorous violas. He announced himself with an epoch making Columbia disc including Paganini's 5th and 13th Caprices, cut slightly but so stunningly played that the performance influenced a generation of players such as Emanuel Vardi, who was inspired by them to take up the viola. And no wonder. Viola play ers usually have something of the crusader about them, and Primrose had found a burn ing zeal for his instrument which had turned him from a good violinist into a great violist. Other highlights of his Columbia sojourn were a meandering but beautifully played Bax Sonata, the Bloch Suite, Paganini's 17th Caprice (with piano) and La Campanella, and Kreisler's Liebesfreud. All are included on a Pearl CD (GEMM CD 9453). For Columbia Primrose also made the first of two recordings of the "Handel" Concerto by Casadesus, which served to display his easeful articula tion and rhythmic flair. Although on the later RCA recording the conductor Frieder Weiss mann, did not match the vigor of Walter Goehr on the Columbia version, the Victor recording showed off the soloist's tone better. The Columbia version is on a Biddulph CD (LAB 088) with two Victor recordings: the Beethoven "Eyeglass" Duo with Feuermann and the best of Primrose's renderings of Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante, in which he is partnered by a fellow Ysaye admirer, Albert Spalding. Another Biddulph CD (LAB 0 II) includes the 1937 HMV version of Brahms's E-flat Sonata; Gerald Moore's deep purple piano sound is well captured by the engineers, as is the tone of the Amati. Brahms's F-minor