Walton’s Viola Concerto was written for Lionel Tertis, who initially rejected the score. However, Paul Hindemith admired it enough to give the premiere, and Tertis later played it often. Thus it remains a rare sighting on programmes not due to its calibre, but to the scarcity of world-class viola players... or of concert managements willing to take a chance rather than play safe. Step up the London Symphony Orchestra and its Artist Portrait series, and incumbent Antoine Tamestit.
Walton’s first movement was captivating from its lyrical opening bars, shared between viola and Juliana Koch’s plangent oboe, through to its quasi-cadenza with tremolo strings. In the two dramatic orchestral outbursts, the LSO reminded us how virtuosic they can be in Walton. There was more effervescence from them in the Scherzo, with the diamantine precision called for in its molto preciso marking. Tamestit was brilliantly engaging in the dancing syncopations and double-stoppings of his demanding solos. Walton is one of the few composers who can write music which is somehow profound and playful, and conductor Robin Ticciati seemed to embody that even in his gestures.
He directed the complex finale with a sure sense of where the music was going. In the wonderful epilogue, Tamestit’s recall of earlier material was replete with nostalgia, and in the long bittersweet envoi the vocal timbre of his sound became deeply elegiac. Did even the penitent Tertis ever play it this well? Tamestit takes his call with his viola held up before him, as if to say, “now you know what poetry lies in here”. And only rarely does one think in the interval “I could listen to that all over again”.