York Bowen (1884-1961)
Viola Concerto in C minor, Op.25 (1907)
William Walton (1902-1983)
Viola Concerto in A minor (1929)
Diyang Mei (viola)
Deutsche Radio Philharmonie/Brett Dean
rec. 2024, SWR Sendesaal Studio Kaiserslautern, Germany
SWR Music SWR19158CD [64]

There’s a strong Berlin Philharmonic connection to this disc. Diyang Mei has been the orchestra’s principal violist since 2022 and conductor Brett Dean was a member of its viola section for fourteen years. Together they’ve joined with the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie to record two very contrasting British viola concertos, one very familiar, the other still neglected.

York Bowen’s Concerto of 1907 was written for the reigning player of the day, Lionel Tertis, who premiered it in London the following year and was to give the American premiere in Chicago in 1923. Tertis was closely associated with Bowen’s viola works and without a strong champion the work soon sank into oblivion until it was revived in 2000 and later recorded by Lawrence Power and Martyn Brabbins in 2004 on Hyperion CDA67546 review. Mei, as one would expect of a player of his calibre, is a worthy soloist and he plays with technical finesse and a commanding overview of the work’s teeming romanticism, lyrical energy, and its virtuosi flourishes, too. He’s particularly fine in the noble restraint of the songful slow movement and in the genial exchanges of the pirouetting finale, though I find Power the more romantically opulent tonalist with a richer, more varied palette of tone colours and he proves a slightly more subtle stylist than Wei.

This new recording which was made in the SWR Sendesaal Studio Kaiserslautern is rather bigger and more immediate than the one for Power with the BBC Scottish and the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie plays with a denser orchestral palette, proving to be more extrovert, though not necessarily more persuasive, than their Scottish rivals.

Whereas the Bowen is still rare on disc, which makes this newcomer the more valuable, the Walton is a twentieth-century staple. Mei and Dean capture its languorous opening movement pretty well with its oscillating moods, but Mei isn’t rhythmically incisive enough in the central Scherzo and this causes the music to hang fire. It lacks real bite and urgency and rapidity of articulation. The finale is certainly not unconscionably slow but Power takes it much faster in his recording with Volkov on Hyperion CDA67587 and is notably more athletic in the crucial central movement. Walton wasn’t always the best conductor of his music but in his recordings with Riddle and Primrose he kept everything on a tight structural rein and both recordings are much faster than this one.

I’d be happy to recommend the Bowen, as an alternative for Power, though it lacks the authority of Power and Brabbins, but I can’t really do the same for the Walton which has been recorded far more convincingly by many other performers.

Jonathan Woolf 

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