JAVS Spring 2022

Prokofiev. He shows, for example, that the major-minor harmonic juxtaposition in the closing bars of the second movement of Hindemith’s Kammermusik no. 5 “in particular must cast doubt on the customary attribution of Walton’s false relations to his familiarity with the repertoire of the English Renaissance.” 36 The major-minor false relation is a dominant feature of Walton’s concerto, and the feature that Tertis found so disturbing: “Lionel told me he had never before heard F and F sharp played together” says his widow Lillian, “it jarred on him.” 37 Reverence for Riddle Frederick Riddle is not to blame for the complex situation that surrounds the concerto’s solo part—he didn’t ask for his ideas to be cast in stone in the 1938 edition. He deserves to be celebrated for the important role he played in popularizing the work through his landmark recording and many performances, and for teaching the work to generations of violists. Riddle was a professor at the Royal College of Music for over forty years and was held in high regard by students and staff alike. His student Christopher Wellington became a professor there himself in 1973. Perhaps Wellington was too close to this “school” of playing and too reverent of his celebrated teacher to be truly objective, Wellington asserts that “the only recording of which the composer is known to have approved” was Riddle’s. 38 Yet Wellington’s assertion is patently false, based in part on how much praise Walton lavished on Yehudi Menuhin’s recording of the concerto. There are other reasons to question Wellington’s objectivity. He is critical of Primrose’s tempo for the second movement (which persuaded the composer to change the published metronome mark) and of his decision to play “spiccato throughout, removing all the composer’s detailed articulations,” yet he champions Riddle’s changes to articulation (such as those shown in Example 7), even though they also remove many of the composer’s chosen articulations. 39 The evidence that Walton preferred the Riddle version is weak, that the painstaking detail with which Walton marked the original and his intense study of the Hindemith and Prokofiev works belies the view that this was a composer who didn’t know what he wanted. His admiration of Tertis and Primrose wasn’t tempered by the liberties they took with the solo part. Walton’s

mistake in combining the original solo part with the revised orchestration in 1962, while at the same time making many small changes, could persuade us that the resulting version is the real “Urtext”—the composer’s first published text enhanced by the composer’s own later refinements. This, by accident or destiny, was the version that violists purchasing the solo part between 1964 and 2002 have used. Performers have always been able to choose which orchestration they prefer—the 1929 or 1962 version—but since 2002 have only been offered one version of the solo part. If the available publication of the solo part contained both the original and the Riddle version it would allow players to arrive at an interpretation of the piece through reference to the 1929 part, while taking note of Riddle’s suggestions and Walton’s later additions. As it turns out, this was Wellington’s original intention. Early on in his research he said, “It is my lively hope that I can persuade [OUP] . . . to issue a double solo part—to contain both versions, so that players may choose for themselves.” 40 It is a shame that this wish was never realized. Notes 1 Oxford University Press, “William Walton Edition,” global.oup.com/academic/content/series/w/william walton-edition-walton. 2 William Walton, ed. Christopher Wellington, Concerto for Viola and Orchestra: Complete Edition: Full Score , (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), x. 3 Eric Blom, “A Fine British Concert,” T he Manchester Guardian , 22 August 1930, 5. 4 Tony Palmer, dir. At the Haunted End of the Day , London Weekend Television, 1981, (Television documentary). 5 Tertis, My Viola and I , 36. 6 Geoffrey Skelton, Paul Hindemith: the Man Behind the Music (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1975), 97–8. 7 Stephen Lloyd, Muse of Fire (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2001), 93. 8 Tertis, My Viola and I , 36–7. 9 Harriet Cohen, A Bundle of Time: The Memoirs of Harriet Cohen (London: Faber and Faber, 1969), 169. 10 Michael Kennedy, Portrait of Walton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 52. 11 David Dalton, Playing the Viola: Conversations with William Primrose (London: Oxford University Press, 1988), 197.

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Journal of the American Viola Society / Vol. 38, No. 1, Spring 2022