Dutton: CDLX7231

Viola-player Roger Chase and his accompanist Michiko Otaki follow Roger’s pioneering Dutton Epoch recording of viola concertos by Stanley Bate and W H Bell (CDLX7216) by celebrating the Tertis tradition, again playing Lionel Tertis’s own Montagnana viola. Here we have music by Arnold Bax, York Bowen, Sir Arthur Bliss, Edmund Rubbra and Vaughan Williams. Bax’s Concert Piece, his early passionate encounter with Ireland, and the two Melodies by Bax’s friend York Bowen are ripely romantic and lyrical effusions, contrasting with the virtuosic, coruscating Sonata by Bliss, and Rubbra’s calmly soaring Meditation on a Byzantine Hymn ‘O Quando in Cruce’.