William Walton

William WALTON (1902-1983)

Viola Concerto (1929). I. Andante comodo

In many "Music History 101" courses British music from the Renaissance into the 20th Century might be summarized: Some madrigals, fa la la -- Purcell -- Elgar (maybe) -- Vaughan Williams and Holst -- Britten. William Walton might get only a footnote glimmering faintly through Britten's shadow, but this doesn't diminish the luminous quality of Sir William's best music, including Belshazzar's Feast (1931).

Between the World Wars and before being eclipsed by the younger upstart (whom, by the way, Walton greatly admired and befriended), Walton was the shining star of "Modern" British music. His first major work was Façade (1922). The piece scandalized the audience during its public premiere in 1923, but one suspects less for the music and more for the seemingly nonsensical poetry it accompanied. The shocking verse was recited (from behind a screen and through a megaphone) by its author, Edith Sitwell, whose literary family had all but adopted Walton after he flunked out of Oxford (for his disdain of algebra, not his music). It didn't take too long for Walton's witty score to become better appreciated, but at first even the musicians hated it--one of the original sextet asked the composer if perhaps a clarinetist had inflicted some injury upon him.

For his Viola Concerto (1929), Walton looked to Elgar and Prokofiev as models, as well as to German composer Paul Hindemith. The latter was really instrumental in the initial success of the concerto: Hindemith appeared as soloist for the premiere after violist Lionel Tertis rejected the work Walton had written for him. The concerto was a big success with the audience and critics, Walton and Hindemith became great friends, and a regretful Tertis soon added the masterful piece to his repertoire.

In 1937 Walton conducted the first recording of the concerto with violist Frederick Riddle, and Riddle provided some changes to his part that the composer gratefully included in the score published the following year. In 1961, Walton revised his orchestration, paring some of the winds and adding a harp. Without withdrawing the original version, Walton published the new edition in 1964, and the concerto is now usually performed with the revised orchestration.

With his Viola Concerto the 27-year-old composer more fully revealed his innate lyricism, previously "hidden under a mask of irony" (The Record Guide, 1956). As Walton matured and focused more on the lyrical and less on the ironic, the fickle critics began to dismiss him as old-fashioned. A decade after his triumph with the Viola Concerto Walton observed in a newspaper interview: "These days it is very sad for a composer to grow old ... I seriously advise all sensitive composers to die at the age of 37. I know: I've gone through the first halcyon period and am just about ripe for my critical damnation."