BATE Viola Concerto. VAUGHAN WILLIAMS (arr. Chase) Romance. BELL Viola Concerto, “Rosa mystica” • Roger Chase (va); Stephen Bell, cond; BBC Concert O • DUTTON 7216 (74:54)

Dutton has done it again! With this totally unexpected disc, they have unearthed and, one hopes, revived the visibility of one of the most shamefully neglected 20th-century English composers, Stanley Bate (1911–1958). And, with his Viola Concerto, written in the closing years of World War II (1944–46), they are representing him at the peak of his powers. This writer never thought he would live to see the day when Bate’s music would be making its recording debut. I heard a BBC air-check of Bate’s Third of his four symphonies in a wonderful reading conducted by Adrian Boult, and its scale and sweep make it equally worthy of revival. There are also several concertos for piano and violin; it is amazing how much valuable music Bate was able to produce within his tragically short life.

This wide-spanned, four-movement Concerto, clocking in at just under 40 minutes, comes close to being a sinfonia concertante, though the soloist is seldom out of the spotlight. Bate received impeccable training, first with his beloved master Vaughan Williams, followed by stints with Boulanger in Paris and Hindemith in Berlin; and, as the result of his peripatetic life style (Australia in the 1930s, New York during the war years, then back to England for his final decade), his essentially very British idiom was stimulated and invigorated by an international neo-Classicism nurturing a hardy romantic spirit.

Although the principal note struck by this concerto, premiered by Emmauel Vardi with the NBC Symphony, is one of grieving lyricism, this elegiac content (except for a very brief Scherzo which seems to belong in another piece) is enclosed in an almost triumphantly epic framework. From the opening measure as the viola outlines its deeply expressive and modality-flavored motto theme, we sense we are embarking on a musical journey of great warmth and weight. The solo instrument, with the orchestra’s steady underlying support and emphasis, practically never ceases to unspool its sad soliloquy. Perhaps the war’s toll played a part in Bate’s creative impetus. This is a viola concerto that can stand comparison with the great Walton and Rubbra counterparts.

Sharing this program with the Bate is an impressive viola concerto by another forgotten Englishman of an earlier generation, William Henry Bell (1873–1946). In 1912, when he seemed to be on the verge of reaping the rewards of a growing reputation in his own country, Bell made the fateful decision to accept a post as director of a college of music in South Africa. Like Edgar Bainton and Eric Chisholm, after this self-removal from the central currents of English music, Bell was quickly eclipsed. But it was in this far-flung place that he became well known for establishing a native musical tradition as conductor, composer, and educator.

This concerto, enigmatically subtitled “Rosa mistica,” and thus bearing an indeterminate spiritual or even autobiographical significance, was one of Bell’s first compositions completed in his new home. But, contrary to the opinion expressed in the annotation by the estimable Lewis Foreman, I found the work intelligent and agreeable enough but lacking in any real individuality. A better example of Bell’s maturity can be heard on an early marco polo CD of his “South African” Symphony of the 1920s (one of five), where his gifts as an evocative orchestrator are much more prominent. Otherwise, this concerto is a rather typical product of its time and place—turn-of-the-century, post-Elgarian British music of a conservative bent, similar to but not as inspired as early John Ireland or Frank Bridge.

Also on this disc is a brief, unpublished, but lovely little Vaughan Williams piece, a Romance of uncertain date, but probably written in the 1920s or 1930s as an encore for the great violist Lionel Tertis. Soloist Roger Chase has carefully orchestrated it in a deft and delicate manner.

Chase and Stephen Bell, conducting the thoroughly experienced BBC Concert Orchestra, present all three works with a sense of impassioned advocacy. But it is the Bate Concerto that makes this an extraordinary and unmissable release.

FANFARE: Paul A. Snook