Quincy Porter - Complete Works for Viola

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Quincy Porter - Complete Works for Viola

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‘Why don’t you play my Viola Concerto more often?’ Quincy Porter once asked William Primrose. Well, replied the canny Scotsman (according to his memoirs), if you don’t run off with an heiress or jump off a building you’re not likely to get many performances these days. The difficulties for violists playing concertos were not confined either to Primrose or to Porter. Resident section leaders would routinely snaffle jobs in certain orchestras – there was at least one leading American orchestra with which Primrose, the greatest virtuoso of the age on his instrument, never gave a solo engagement for precisely this reason. In any case it didn’t avail Porter, of whose concerto Primrose was a strong admirer.

Porter must have known some of this, as he was a violist himself. His Concerto was composed in 1948 in four concise movements. Its opening is lazy, meandering, a recitative interlaced with burbling winds and noble brass with the viola sticking to its mid-range and espousing lyric verities. It has a similar ease as the Walton but lacks its Mediterranean languor and sensual appeal. Melancholy is a component too in an intimate way, but Porter unleashes his down-home self in the finale which is a barn dance of great dynamism, with witty wind writing above the strutting figures.

As this is an all-viola disc Eliesha Nelson is centre-stage. She plays the Speed Etude – written in the same year as the concerto - with just the right moto perpetuo decisiveness. The piano’s widely spaced writing allows the viola the middle ground once again and its figuration is thereby perfectly audible. The Duo for viola and harp or harpsichord is heard in both versions. It sports a long line, speeds up for a jazz-rich central panel and ends tenderly. The harp version sounds the more ‘playable’ but there’s a certain tangy quality about the harpsichord
version that I like too.

He touches on Blues most obviously in Blues Lontains for Viola and Piano, the earliest work here, dating from 1928 – it’s alternately rugged and keening. But he’s at his most exploratory in the Duo for violin and viola of 1954, where he uses dissonance creatively and malleably. The see-sawing violin figures of the central Lento contrast with the viola’s richer freedoms, and both conjoin in an ebullient and engaging dialogue in the finale. Porter had no problems with finales. He gave them a stomping good time.

Nelson is a fine guide, judging Porter’s temper and tone with real sensitivity and skill. She has the multi-faceted John McLaughlin Williams with her – playing piano, violin, harpsichord and conducting in the Concerto. The only thing he doesn’t do is play the harp. For shame!

Warmly recorded, the engineers have ensured that Porter’s discreet aural promotion of the viola is securely projected. If you enjoy Robert Russell Bennett, and like the kind of Americana that Louis Kaufman liked – Piston, Barber et al – then you will find Porter very much to your liking.