Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Foreword
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 The Tertis Family
- 2 Early Career
- 3 The Great War
- 4 The Chamber Music Players
- 5 American Tours
- 6 Return to the Royal Academy of Music
- 7 The Elgar and Walton Concertos
- 8 The BBC Orchestra, Delius, Bax and Vaughan Williams
- 9 A Shock Retirement
- 10 The Richardson–Tertis Viola
- 11 The Second World War
- 12 Promoting the Tertis Model Viola
- 13 Return to America and Eightieth Birthday Celebrations
- 14 Second Marriage and Last Appearance
- 15 TV Profile and Ninetieth Birthday
- 16 Final Years
- Notes
- Appendix 1 Tertis’s Violas
- Appendix 2 The Tertis Model Viola
- Appendix 3 Tertis’s Writings and Talks
- Appendix 4 Tertis’s BBC Appearances
- Appendix 5 Tertis’s Honours
- Appendix 6 Music with Tertis Connections
- Appendix 7 The Tertis Bequest
- Appendix 8 The Tertis Legacy
- Discography
- Bibliography
- Index
14 - Second Marriage and Last Appearance
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 March 2023
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Foreword
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 The Tertis Family
- 2 Early Career
- 3 The Great War
- 4 The Chamber Music Players
- 5 American Tours
- 6 Return to the Royal Academy of Music
- 7 The Elgar and Walton Concertos
- 8 The BBC Orchestra, Delius, Bax and Vaughan Williams
- 9 A Shock Retirement
- 10 The Richardson–Tertis Viola
- 11 The Second World War
- 12 Promoting the Tertis Model Viola
- 13 Return to America and Eightieth Birthday Celebrations
- 14 Second Marriage and Last Appearance
- 15 TV Profile and Ninetieth Birthday
- 16 Final Years
- Notes
- Appendix 1 Tertis’s Violas
- Appendix 2 The Tertis Model Viola
- Appendix 3 Tertis’s Writings and Talks
- Appendix 4 Tertis’s BBC Appearances
- Appendix 5 Tertis’s Honours
- Appendix 6 Music with Tertis Connections
- Appendix 7 The Tertis Bequest
- Appendix 8 The Tertis Legacy
- Discography
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Flos campi – Manchester Concert – South Africa – marriage to Lillian – 85th birthday tribute – Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medal – last appearance
At the 1958 King's Lynn Festival Tertis was the soloist in Vaughan Williams's Flos campi, which he had premiered in 1925. With the conductor Herbert Menges he visited RVW at his London home, 10 Hanover Terrace, and had a further rehearsal at Mahatma Gandhi Hall (Morley College) with orchestra and chorus (the Linden Singers), which Vaughan Williams attended. The Sunday Times of 29 June 1958 had a front-page photograph of Tertis and Vaughan Williams at rehearsal, and on page 5 there was an article entitled ‘Mr Tertis's Philosophy’:
Lionel Tertis, Britain's outstanding viola player, who at eighty-one is busy rehearsing a lengthy work for the King's Lynn Festival, accepts the difficulties of an arthritic arm and a burdensome myopia with what he calls the Beecham philosophy of playing till you drop.
Because he can read the score only by poring over it, he has had, he says, to cultivate his faculty of memorising an entire work a phrase at a time.
Characteristically, Mr Tertis is more ready to talk of the three young viola-makers he has discovered in this country than of himself. When he was severely crippled by arthritis in 1936, he spent his time designing a viola, then an instrument hard to find anywhere at any price. From this design instruments have gone from England all over the world, made by the three young men in their own homes and in their spare time. Some of them are of a craftmanship which Mr Tertis reckons the finest he has seen anywhere.
The performance took place on 1 August in St Nicholas Chapel, a large and beautiful fifteenth-century church, in the presence of the Queen Mother, who told Tertis how moved she had been by his playing of Flos campi. The Queen Mother's Lady-in-Waiting, Ruth, Lady Fermoy, founded the King's Lynn Festival in 1951 and was the guiding spirit for a number of years.
Some time before the concert, Tertis wrote to Lillian Warmington, inviting her to attend his performance of Flos campi, which she happily accepted.
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- Information
- Lionel TertisThe First Great Virtuoso of the Viola, pp. 254 - 273Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2006