Timothy Ridout (viola)
Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767)
Fantasia No.1 in B flat TWV 40:14
Fantasia No.7 in E flat TWV 40:20
Caroline Shaw (b. 1982)
in manas tuas
Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)
Elegy for solo viola
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Partita No.2 in D minor BWV 1004
rec. 2024, St Silas Church, Kentish Town, London
Reviewed as a download
Harmonia Mundi HMM902750 [61]
Soon after I started writing reviews for MWI last summer I received an email from Len our founder asking me and all the reviewers to start thinking about our Recordings of the Year. The discs can be anything you have enjoyed in (roughly) the calendar year, but the records must have received a review on the site. The six I chose can be found here alongside everyone else’s picks. Had Timothy Ridout’s excellent 2 CD set celebrating Lionel Tertis been given a review I might well have been tempted. It was and is a superb set, featuring viola sonatas by York Bowen, Rebecca Clarke and a myriad of other pieces special to Tertis and Ridout. Timothy Ridout’s new record was released by Harmonia Mundi in February. I bought the disc then for my personal stash, not with the intention of reviewing it for the site. As we approached the summer months, however, I was starting to get jittery. Maybe no-one would review it, I thought, and if that were so, I would not be able to choose it as one of my records of the year. So here goes, then, a little late perhaps, but better late than never.
Timothy Ridout is for me the standout violist of his generation. Fellow viola virtuosi Lawrence Power and Antoine Tamestit are quite a bit older than he; he is still in his twenties and turning thirty this year. The four records he has made so far for Harmonia Mundi, including this one, are excellent. As well as that Tertis tribute, he has recorded Elgar and Bloch concertante works with the BBC SO and Martyn Brabbins – superlative performances – and a delectable disc of Prokofiev and Schumann arrangements, the latter including a transcription of Dichterliebe that I adore.
Ridout plays on a big instrument made by the hands of the master Peregrino Michelli di Zanetto in about 1570. It has a lovely warm tone and a strong powerful lower resonance. The CD under review contains music for solo viola. The program he has chosen is based on a concert he gave at the Wigmore Hall in October 2023. It is an excellent selection of pieces for unaccompanied viola offering variety and real depth. We get to hear most of the pieces he gave in that prestigious venue except for a couple of works by Sally Beamish and György Kurtág.
Having lived with the record for a few months, I have learned to listen to it in two parts. The first part comprises of two Telemann fantasias, framing a contemporary piece by Caroline Shaw. Telemann wrote perhaps the first important viola concerto. The pieces we now collect together and brand TWV 40 contain chamber music without basso continuo. The first 37 of them are unaccompanied and Telemann writes for flute, violin and viola da gamba. Nos 14 and 20 are performed here in arrangements for viola. The pieces are easy to listen to and rightly popular (in their original violin versions). They date from 1735 and breathe the baroque style of the time. Both pieces adopt the slow-fast-slow-fast structure and have similar timings of around eight minutes. Ridout plays them with clarity, and he is appropriately bouncy and zestful in the livelier dances (sample track 5). He is also not afraid to use open strings occasionally which can be really effective in the slower more contemplative sections.
Enshrined within the Telemann sits in manus tuas by Caroline Shaw. This piece was originally for cello but has since been transcribed for viola by the composer herself. In less than seven minutes, Shaw creates a tribute to the motet by Tallis, venerating the stillness and mystery of the piece. There is a lot of string crossing, and an other-worldly voice added (Ridout’s own?) which appears a few times with added reverberation. It is a highly effective work, tonal, tender and easy to appreciate. I found the final pizzicato section based on Tallis starting at 4:45 very effective, emerging from the silence as it does.
It is best to take a break at this point. The second course on the disc is meatier than the first and it’s not all easy listening. We begin with the Elegy written by the 16-year-old Benjamin Britten as he left his boarding school in 1930. This is a sad, lonely, introspective piece that only received its first performance in the 80s. Written in a ternary form with a dark intensity at the centre framed by music of unusual chromaticism and an unsettling sonority, it is an anguished soliloquy remarkable from the pen of so young a schoolboy.
The Elegy serves as a prelude to the last work, the great Partita No.2 by Bach. This work takes up more than half the record, and the mighty chaconne at its end encompasses most of that. We now think Bach wrote the piece in 1720 very soon after the heartbreaking passing of his wife Maria Barbara. The first four movements of the Partita use conventional dance forms in the established manner. The final ciaccona is very different. Many believe this piece to be Bach’s greatest composition. Brahms marvelled how “on one stave, for one small instrument he was able to encompass a whole world of the deepest thoughts and the most powerful things”. I truly believe the church chorales Bach references in the piece are a sure clue that enshrined within is his heartfelt tribute to his dear Barbara. It is an intensely spiritual piece and is easily transposed for the viola. I believe Timothy Ridout uses the same positions and fingerings; the fact the viola is tuned a fifth lower than the violin just means that it comes out in the key of G minor.
Ridout is rhythmically alive and lyrical in phrasing as he dances through the allemande-courante-sarabande-gigue phases. The sound balanced by Andrew Keener and Dave Rowell is wonderful with just the right amount of body and warmth. Timothy Ridout is bright and expressive in the opening allemande which he takes moderately. You may think the courante is a little too pacey and the following sarabande conversely a bit heavily laden, but I like these contrasts. Ridout’s technique is sure, and his wonderful instrument resonates in the glowing acoustic of St Silas gloriously. The Gigue is in fact a perfect example of this. The sureness and naturalness of his bowing, the exemplary intonation coupled with the chiaroscuro he can conjure, even in such rapid figurations as these, are notable.
The chaconne extends to the heavenly length of 15:12 in this performance (not actually lengthy at all compared to some). Being a mathematician, I cannot but admire Bach’s architectural plan, its symmetry and perfection of structural form. The early variations on that ground bass are in the minor key. On the way down again, he reverts to the major. This is playing that shuns showmanship and exhibitionism. It feels as if he is playing privately or to a small audience of intimates. His hushed quiet playing is a marvel and his employment of the bariolage technique accomplished (cue in around the 5:00 mark to sample both). His timbre is ravishingly seductive, yet he will bring you close to tears to with such aching pathos. This chaconne is an exceptional performance and rightly brings the disc to a close. You could not follow it with anything else.
Tim Ridout is surely going to be a name record collectors need to get used to as he moves into his 30s. He is highly valued as a chamber music partner by many and has already been the muse to some high-ranking composers. In December 2024, he premiered Mark Simpson’s new Viola Concerto in the Philharmonie in Berlin. I managed to record the stream of the live broadcast put out by rbbKultur. I see he will perform it in Liverpool next season, too. I note too that he is due to add the Bliss sonata to his repertory this year so perhaps we will see that on record eventually. He tells Tully Potter in his excellent essay, included in the booklet, that he intends to return to the sonatas and partitas in about twelve years and record the complete set. Lucky us; I, for one, cannot wait. You will have to wait until Christmas to see if this disc does indeed make it into my top six records of 2025. It has been a great year of releases so far, so we will have to see. At least after this review it meets the MWI eligibility criteria.
Philip Harrison
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