Primrose Says It With A Viola

New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 30, 19 January 1940, Page 55

Primrose Says It With A Viola

HATEVER it is, this is not an article about the flower garden in January, how to chase drone bees off your property, run ragwort to earth, or other agricultural pursuits; it is about a toothbrush-mustached gentleman from Glasgow called William Primrose, generally considered the finest viola-player in the world. Handel’s Concerto in B Minor for Viola and Orchestra is to be presented from 2YN Nelson at 8p.m. on Monday, January 22. William Primrose is the soloist, with a chamber orchestra conducted by Walter Goehr. To a large number of people the viola is practically unknown. Do you play it with the mouth, do you rest it on the floor, do you hold it across your knee? Do you twang it, splutter through it, bang

it, or stroke it? Here is what Time has to say of the ubiquitous instrument: "The viola is in nature an undersized pansy. In art it is an oversized violin with a tubby, whisky-contralto voice. Except for low-moaning the inner voices of symphonies and string quartets, it is not good for much. Most of the time it merely plays pah to the ‘cello’s oom. Most of the people who pull horsehair bows over its goatgut strings are ex-violinists who failed to make the grade." Number One The athletic Mr. Primrose is no second-grader. Lately he has been playing principal viola under Arturo Toscanini with the American NBC Symphony. Also recently he has been playing with the far-famed Budapest String Quartet (they were in New Zealand in July-August of 1937), in quintets for the Manhattan New Friends of Music. His own Primrose Quartet has just eased into the front rank of United States

chamber music groups. Especially for the athletic musician, six of the world’s foremost composers (including Paul Hindmith, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Arnold Bax, William Walton) have been writing viola sonatas and concertos, Thirty years ago, in Glasgow, the young Primrose discovered a penchant for sawing away at an old viola that was lying about in his father’s house. A viola-playing father objected, and set his William to studying the more versatile violin. But Primrose the younger never forgot happy hours with the viola, and some years later, in Brussels, his teacher, the late Eugéne Ysaye, told him he had special aptitude for the instrument: he switched to it, for life. Primrose Blooms How he came to play with the NBC Orchestra is, in itself, rather romantic. When, in 1937, NBC officials were selecting players for the orchestra, they heard a record of Primrose playing a Paganini caprice, Listening spell-bound to the brilliance of the playing, they had doubts as to its authenticity, were tempted to think Heifetz, or some other superbrilliant violinist had made the record under an assumed name. They sent a wire to Primrose, at the time on tour with the London String Quartet, and offered him the post of chief violaplayer under Toscanini. Primrose said, Yes, thank you. One wonders whether Clifford Odets, when he wrote his famous play Golden Boy (now cinematised) was not thinking perhaps of Primrose, For Primrose was once a first-class boxer; and still is a connoisseur in the matter of jabs, hooks, and upper-cuts. Though, for fear of hurting his hands, he no longer dares get into the ring, he spends his evenings at no musical tea parties but among the Madison Square Garden fans, getting a thrill with the toughest of them. Once Primrose played one-night stands. He trudged through sleet and slush in many a Canadian and Midwestern town from dirty hotel to draughty theatre. Now it is good-bye to all that. These days he is heard by more people at one concert than in fifteen years before. Used to hardship on the "way up," now he has no more discomfort than is involved in stepping from a big car into a nice, warm broadcasting studio. "Tt makes you feel like an orchid," says William Primrose,