West Hartlepool has the honour of being the birthplace of one of this century's greatest musicians, Lionel Tertis. He was born on 29 December 1876, the elder son of Polish immigrants. Three months later, however, the family moved to Spitalfields in London.
In 1897, he fell in love with the viola, an unfashionable instrument which he had to teach himself. He then dedicated his whole life to raising the status of the viola to full recognition as a solo instrument. During World War I he played with a great many famous musicians and composers like Elgar, Delius, Bliss, Walton and Vaughan Williams gradually began to allow him to arrange their works or indeed write for the instrument themselves. Now accepted as the unsurpassed master of the viola, Tertis made countless gramophone records between 1920 and 1933, of which a selection was reissued in 1966, on the occasion of his ninetieth birthday. As Grove remarks, Tertis produced a big powerful tone of great beauty and intensity.