Sam Rosenthal, viola

It’s been a remarkable week! The 14th Lionel Tertis International Viola Competition has been taking place at The Glasshouse in Newcastle and I have had the pleasure of chairing the jury in a festival of events which has also involved the Cecial Aronowitz Viola Competition for players aged 18 and under, concerts by major viola players (including Timothy Ridout, Thomas Riebl, Françoise Gneri, Robin Ireland, Thomas Selditz), ensembles, violin and viola makers and much more.

This extraordinary week was led by the inspirational Louise Lansdown with a remarkable team including Nicky Footer (Administrator), Kirin Howat, Matthew Hayes, Peter Whitehead, Alex Robinson and many others who coordinated the seven full days of activities with extraordinary precision.

The Tertis Competition featured 39 remarkable viola players (aged under 30) in the final rounds. Playing works by Bach, Paganini or Ligeti in the first of these and then progressing to a major sonata coupled with the set piece, Garth Knox’s The Bridges of Newcastle, each round had its challenges but the players performed at a truly remarkable level and with great assurance. Many perfromnaces were memorised, Garth Knox’s work received multiple characterful interpretations and we heard many great sonatas from the viola repertoire. The accompanists were Anthony Hewitt, Robert Markham and Sophia Rahman who covered all 39 players’ repertoire for the second and third rounds, an impressive achievement.

Eight remarkable players won their way through to the a third round where they performed a complete sonata (Bax, Bowen, Brahms, Bliss, Hindemith) together with a movement of their chosen concerto which included Bartók, Walton, Hindemith’s Schwanendreher. The selected players were Francisca Barradas Vaz Galante (Portugal), Brian Isaacs (USA), Wanxinyi Huang (China), Ami-Louise Johnsson (Sweden), Sam Rosenthal (USA), Yanan Wang (China), Sarah Strohm (Switzerland) and Nicolas Garrigues (France).

It was a hard choice for the jury to select the three concerto finalists but in the end it camde clear that they were to be Ami-Louise Johnsson playing the Walton Concerto, Sam Rosenthal playing the york Bowen Concerto and Nicolas Garrigues playing the Bartók Concerto.

Congratulations, too, to Jaeyun Han (South Korea), Jackson Hill (USA) and Yunyu Zhow for their performances in the Aronowitz Competition final. In the end, the jury of Garfield Jackson, Sheng Li Thomas Riebl and Ásdís Valdimarsdóttir, chaired by Jo Cole name

The Tertis Competition jury 2025: Françoise Gneri, George Caird, Lilli Maijala, Robin Ireland, and Thomas Selditz with Garth Knox wearing his red Bridge of Newcastle T-shirt pictured in The Glasshouse, Newcastle

Louise Lansdown with Lionel Tertis statue

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