MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             
 

William Walton (1902 - 1983)– Violin Concerto (1938-9, rev. 1943)


1. Andante tranquillo
2. Presto capriccioso alla napolitana
3. Vivace  

A choirmaster’s son, Walton became a chorister at Christ Church Cathedral School, Oxford (1912), and seemed set fair for a conventional choral career. However, fear provoked him into composing, specifically anthems “to make myself interesting . . . or when my voice breaks I’ll be sent home”. His nascent Piano Quartet entranced the undergraduate Sacheverell Sitwell. When Walton, having failed his exams, bemoaned his fate, the Sitwell siblings’ solution was to “adopt” him, organising an income so that their “pet genius” could compose in comfort. Living in London, mingling with the cream of artistic society, Walton had everything on a plate. 

It showed. For all its effrontery, Façade was a confection. Yet, as Walton matured, real creative fires ignited - the Viola Concerto (1929), Belshazzar’s Feast (1931), and the lacerating First Symphony (1931-5). The spur? Basically, the women in his life, but something else: accompanying the Sitwells on their Italian jaunts, he quickly became captivated. Maybe more than in any other work, these factors fuse in the Violin Concerto. Born out of love - for Italy and Alice Wimbourne - it was “fathered” by Heifetz. Daunted by the honour, Walton struggled more than usual, ultimately enlisting Heifetz to help “jazz up” the fruits of his limited technical knowledge. 

This also shows. Numerous gratuitous virtuoso flurries possibly explain Walton’s wry comment on recovering the lost score, “A pity it was ever found, really.” Speak for yourself, Mr. Walton! As the throw-back to the First Symphony seems a storm-threat (or a lovers’ tiff?), so those flurries seem irksome midges, all part of a musical picture exquisitely reflecting romance on the Tyrrhenian Sea’s idyllic shores. Of course, there’s much more to it, but no space to say, so for now just bask in the festive syncopations, the “folksy fiddling” and, most of all, the languorous luxuriance of Walton’s “bel canto” violin. 

Note originally commissioned by the Vancouver Symphony for a concert given on 19 February 2005
.
 

Return to Programme Index

© Paul Serotsky
29, Carr Street, Kamo, Whangarei 0101, Northland, New Zealand

paul@serotsky.fsnet.co.uk
 

Conditions for use apply. Details here
Copyright in these notes is retained by the author without whose prior written permission they may not be used, reproduced, or kept in any form of data storage system. Permission for use will generally be granted on application, free of charge subject to the conditions that (a) the author is duly credited, and (b) a donation is made to a charity of the author's choice.

Return to: Music on the Web