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
- 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
The Great War – Belgian connections – lifelong friendships – Queen Elisabeth of the Belgians
Tertis was thirty-seven at the start of the Great War, and too old for any meaningful military service. When he was eventually called up, he turned out to be unfit. Like others in the same situation – the great bass Robert Radford, for example – he threw himself into helping the war effort by entertaining those on the home front. He was to look back on the war as a ghastly watershed in history: ‘Whatever our apprehensions, we little realised that it would spell the end of the sanguine, prosperous, hopefully forward-looking Europe most of us regarded as becoming solidly established.’
The German occupation of Belgium and the accompanying atrocities horrified the British nation. One of the best-selling publications of the 1914 Christmas season was King Albert's Book, produced by the Daily Telegraph in association with other leading newspapers under the editorship of Hall Caine. Among the musicians who contributed were Elgar, Lange-Muller, Liza Lehmann, Mackenzie, Mascagni, Paderewski and Saint-Saens. The Belgian refugees who flooded across the Channel into Britain included many musicians, some of whom were to play a large role in Tertis's wartime career. Eugene Goossens, himself of Belgian stock, described the musical scene in Britain:
At the outbreak of war all German professional musicians in Britain – and their number was legion – were sent back to the Fatherland, to the great delight of many British artists, who found themselves with increased work and considerably improved chances of livelihood. The public were soon to realise that in Albert Sammons, Felix Salmond, Lionel Tertis, William Murdoch, Myra Hess and many other instrumentalists (and singers) England possessed the equal of the fine German artists who had, up to that time, almost completely monopolised the British musical scene.
Tertis consolidated lifelong friendships during the war with others among Europe's finest musicians in addition to the Belgians. They met at the private chamber music parties held in ‘Mrs Draper's cellar’ in Edith Grove, which Eugene Ysaye called ‘La Cave’. This is where, in 1913, Artur Rubinstein1 had met Tertis for the first time. In his memoirs, Rubinstein described him as ‘an unassuming little man in his middle thirties with the kindest eyes in the world behind his glasses, and a ready smile. A thick, tobacco-blonde, oppressive moustache belied the rest of his friendly face.’
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- Lionel TertisThe First Great Virtuoso of the Viola, pp. 26 - 42Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2006