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Programme Notes
The Bear - an extravaganza in one act
The Bear was commissioned by the Koussevitsky Foundation in 1965 and first performed at the Aldeburgh Festival in 1967. The opera, based on a short story of Chekhov, has a libretto by Paul Dehn.
The action takes place in the drawing room of Madam Popova’s house in the country in 1888. Popova, a pretty widow affectedly faithful to the memory of her late and, alas, promiscuous, husband is confronted by Smirnov, one of her husband’s more boorish creditors. They quarrel to a point at which each aims a loaded pistol at the other, but neither can fire. They have both fallen helplessly in love.
Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press
Belshazzar's Feast
Walton was aged 29 when Belshazzar's Feast was first performed at the Leeds Triennial Festival on 8 October 1931, conducted by Malcolm Sargent. Although the witty elegance of Façade and the beautiful Viola Concerto had already established Walton as something of an enfant terrible latterly gaining respectability, no-one could have forseen what an impact Belshazzar's Feast would make.
The text, chosen by Osbert Sitwell, is taken from the Book of Daniel, and tells the story of the writing on the wall that signified the downfall of Belshazzar and the city of Babylon. Walton scored it for large forces - double mixed choir, baritone solo, orchestra including organ and an array of percussion, and two brass ensembles. The work unfolds with amazing energy, as Walton matches the text's drama with music that suggests irony, melancholy, fear, outrage, and the orgiastic feast itself.
Sixty years on, Belshazzar's Feast still has the power to stun an audience with its barbaric splendour.
© Oxford University Press, Reproduced by permission
Cantico del Sole
This motet for unaccompanied chorus uses a text in Italian by St Francis of Assisi. It was commissioned by Lady Mayer (wife of Sir Robert) for the 1974 Cork International Choral Festival. The piece received its first performance at University College, Cork in April 1974.
Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press
Façade: Suite
The first Suite was made in 1926 (the second came in 1938) and consists of five numbers:
i. Polka - a piece of pastiche circus music with the brass tilting at the old music hall song `See me dance the polka', `Snap' rhythms and silky woodwind give a comical lurch.
ii. Valse - this begins with a nod to Ravel and then seems to remember `The Belle of the Ball'. Jazz inflections remind us that during the 1920s Walton earned money by arranging for dance bands, including Jack Hylton's: it gains additional point now from the way in which jazzmen from Duke Ellington on down have explored 3/4 time and the jazz waltz.
iii. Swiss Yodeling Song - a mildly beer-and-cream-bun
sentimentality informs this mock-Ländler which also includes the ranz
desvaches and jingling cow-bells. A bassoon leads off and at the end the
indulgent mood is dispelled by a sharp cadence.
iv. Tango-Pasadoblé - again a touch of slightly vulgarised Ravel at the outset; but the middle seems to veer towards the bullring. Incongruously, perhaps (but picking up a hint from the Sitwell text), the old popular song `I do like to be beside the seaside' gives a melodic lead.
v. Tarantella Sevillana - another Spanish tilt; and another hint taken from Ravel (who seems to share with Stravinsky the European influence on the Façade music). 6/8 animates the first part of what is in effect a minuet and trio, while the trio turns to 3/4 with a tune derived from the second subject of the minuet, plus another of its own devising. The orchestration in this movement is particularly brilliant and telling. But so, if we pay attention, it is throughout.
Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press
Johnannesburg Festival Overture
The Johannesburg Festival Overture was written in 1956, in the period after Walton completed Troilus and Cressida, at the invitation of Ernest Fleischmann who was then musical director of the Johannesburg Festival. The commission was to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the City of Johannesburg in a broadcast given by the South African Broadcasting Corporation Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent, on 25 September 1956.
Fleischmann suggested to Walton that he should include some African themes and sent him some Bantu melodies. However, Walton used his own material and created an elaborate rondo form with a large percussion section (3 players) including maracas, rumba sticks, and castanets. The result, in Walton's own words, is `a non-stop galop...slightly crazy, hilarious, and vulgar.'
© Oxford University Press, Reproduced by permission
Partita for Orchestra
Toccata – Pastorale Siciliana – Giga Burlesca
George Szell - a long-time champion of Walton’s music - commissioned this work in 1955 for the 40th anniversary of the Cleveland Orchestra. In three movements, the piece was first performed on 30 January 1958. For the occasion Walton wrote one of his rare programme notes:
“Two major difficulties confront me in responding to your kind invitation to contribute a few words about my new Partita for Orchestra. Firstly, I am a writer of notes and (to my regret) not of prose. Secondly, it is surely easier to write about a piece of creative work if there is something problematical about it. Indeed - so it seems to me - the more problematical, the greater the flow of words. Unfortunately from this point of view, my Partita poses no problems, has no ulterior motive or meaning behind it, and makes no attempt to ponder the imponderables. I have written it in the hope it may be enjoyed straight off, without any preliminary probing into the score. I have also written it with the wonderful players of the Cleveland Orchestra in mind, hoping that they may enjoy playing it. If either of these two hopes is fulfilled, I shall be more than happy.
The work is in three shortish movements and their titles explain themsleves. The orchestra used is normal, with no unusual ‘extras’. Since the first and third movements are predominantly vigorous and use full orchestra for a good deal of the time, I have designed the middle movement, the Pastorale Siciliana, which opens with an unaccompanied duet between solo viola and solo oboe, as a complete contrast in mood and texture.”
© William Walton
Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press
Passacaglia for solo cello
The Passacaglia was written for Mstislav Rostropovich, and completed in December 1980. Based on an eight bar theme, it opens Lento espressivo. Travelling rhapsodically through a rich pattern of varying emotional tensions and figuration, the music becomes poised on the dominant, before the final Subito vivace, freer in its treatment of the passacaglia theme, brings the work to a brisk and spirited conclusion.
The first performance was given by Rostropovich on 16 March 1982 at the Royal Festival Hall, London.
Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press
Piano Quartet
No less a person than Sir Hubert Parry said of Walton’s boyhood pieces in 1917 “there’s a lot in this chap, you must keep your eye on him!” In 1918, as an undergraduate of Christ Church, Oxford (one of the youngest members of Oxford University since Henry VIII), Walton began work on his first large-scale composition, the Pianoforte Quartet, which he completed the following year. It was published in 1924 (the score having been lost for two years in the post) and a slightly revised version was issued in 1976. The work is astonishing for a sixteen-year-old, but our surprise must eventually come from the music, not from the calendar.
The first movement, Allegramente, is concerned with two principal ideas, both stated at length. The first, which begins the work on the violin, is in the Dorian mode, and together with its subsidiary material leads eventually to the second subject, stated in two octaves on the piano, in the unlikely key of G-sharp. Although the exposition is full, the development is both nervous and brief. The recapitulation is much curtailed and somewhat irregular, functioning as a second development, a structural procedure characteristic of Walton’s large-scale mature works. The scherzo - also typical of this composer - is hectic: tumbling with ideas, developed in a surprisingly wide manner, particularly noteworthy being a gritty fugato on the strings, also in the Dorian mode.
The slow movement, Andante tranquillo, is a simple ABA structure. The melodic strength of this movement is indeed striking, particularly the unusual warmth of the tonic key, E major. Another feature is the influence of Brahms’s chamber music, in the inclusion of a faster, nervous episode, which refers to the opening theme of the work.
The finale is a knock-out, again teeming with ideas and rhythmically snappy in best Walton style, including a gorgeous theme for the cello and a fugato obviously derived from the opening ritornello. The rhythmic drive of the music gradually subsides, and the opening theme of the Quartet returns at the end, as sure a fingerprint of this composer as any in this wholly admirable, fresh, and spontaneous work.
Reprinted by permission of the Oxford University Press
A Song for the Lord Mayor’s Table
Early in 1962 the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths commissioned Sir William Walton to write a work for the City of London Festival. The result, A Song for the Lord Mayor’s Table, was written for Elizabeth Schwarzkopf and was first performed by her in Goldsmiths’ Hall on 18 July 1962 when she was accompanied by Gerald Moore.
Sir William Walton later orchestrated the songs. The first performance of the later version was given in July 1970 by Dame Janet Baker with the English Chamber Orchestra, in the Mansion House, again as part of the City of London Festival.
Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press
String Quartet
Sir William Walton’s String Quartet dates from 1946-47. It is of no little importance in his composing career, since it was his first full-scale work since the Violin Concerto of 1939, the interim war years having been devoted mostly to film music and a few smaller pieces. Furthermore, the String Quartet was his first representative piece of chamber music: his only other essays in this field were two very early works, one of them since disowned. The slow movement of this quartet was the first to be completed, and though the themes of two other movements were already to hand at that stage - all these themes were in fact written in one day - the rest of the work was composed slowly. As had happened before, and has happened since, two “first performances” of the quartet were announced, and the dates went by without the work becoming available. Ultimately the first performance was given in May 1947 by the BBC. The work is dedicated to Ernest Irving, who was Musical Director to Ealing Films, and a remarkably knowledgeable musician as well as a highly entertaining personality and a close friend of most British composers.
© Alan Frank
Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press
Symphony No. 1
The Symphony No. 1 caused its composer much trouble, both emotionally and technically. The four years which it took to write included one eight-month hiatus and several briefer ones. The work had its première, of only three movements, on 3 December 1934 by the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir Hamilton Harty. The première of the complete work with the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Harty took place 6 November 1935.
It is generally accepted as one of the essential landmarks of twentieth-century symphonic writing. The emotional turmoil, anger, bitterness, frustration, and complexity mark it as a contemporary work; and the final genuine triumph of the human spirit marks it as a great work. American commentators have generally admired the strength and vigor of the music. An English critic, on the other hand, has referred to it as a `musical symbol of all that is most characteristic of our hidden selves...[it] releases so much that lies beneath the surface.'
Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press
The Twelve
This eleven minute setting, dedicated “To Christ Church, Oxford and its Dean, Cuthbert Simpson”, brought together two if its outstanding creative figures, the composer and the poet W. H. Auden, five years Walton’s junior. Auden’s text is surely one of the most distinguished and telling of any written expressly for musical setting in our time. The anthem was first given in its original form, with organ, on 16th May, 1965, by the choir of Chtist Church directed by Sydney Watson. Later the organ part was scored for symphony orchestra and in that form it was first heard at Westminster Abbey in 1966. The text, as will be seen below, is in three parts, the first opening with a bass recitative leading into a vigorous Allegro. The middle, slow parts (“O Lord, my God”) uses solo boys’ voices, both individually and as a duet: note the floating effect of their repeated “I shall be there” and, towards the beginning of the third part, the transporting passage for divided upper voices at the words “Beautiful still are the starry heavens”. The final section of the work gives Walton every chance to display his exuberance, unashamed of a long dominant pedal, unashamed of repetition and of sequence. He alone among living composers knows exactly how to compose a “merry noise”.
© Alan Frank
Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press
I
Without arms or charm of culture,
Persons of no importance
From an unimportant Province,
They did as the Spirit bid,
Went forth into a joyless world
Of swords and rhetoric
To bring it joy.
When they heard the Word, some demurred, some mocked,
some were shocked: but many were stirred and the Word spread.
Lives long dead were quickened to life;
the sick were healed by the Truth revealed;
released into peace from the gin of old sin,
men forgot themselves in the glory of the story told by the Twelve.
Then the Dark Lord, adored by this world,
perceived the threat of the Light to his might.
From his throne he spoke to his own.
The loud crowd, the sedate engines of State,
were moved by his will to kill. It was done.
One by one, they were caught, tortured, and slain.
II
O Lord, my God,
Though I forsake thee
Forsake me not,
But guide me as I walk
Through the valley of mistrust,
And let the cry of my disbelieving absence
Come unto thee,
Thou who declared unto Moses:
“I shall be there.”
III
Children play about the ancestral graves,
for the dead no longer walk.
Excellent still in their splendour are the antique statues:
but can do neither good nor evil.
Beautiful still are the starry heavens:
but our fate is not written there.
Holy still is speech, but there is no sacred tongue:
the Truth may be told in all.
Twelve as the winds and the months are those who taught us these things:
envisaging each in an oval glory, let us praise them all with a merry noise.
W.H. Auden
Violin Sonata
"When I sit down to write music, I never trouble about modernism or anything else. I certainly never try to write for today or even for tomorrow, but to compose something which will have the same merit whatever time it is performed."
© William Walton
Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press
The Sonata for Violin and Piano, although untroubled as regards genre, certainly reflects Walton's internal conflicts and stirring emotions of the time. The work had an inauspicious beginning: Walton's mistress, Alice Wimborne, had fallen ill. Her London doctor maintained that nothing was wrong; her condition having improved, the couple went off to Capri for a holiday, dropping in on Lucerne on the way. Alice became unwell again. Walton took her to a Swiss specialist who diagnosed cancer of the bronchus and she entered a Lausanne nursing home. Due to the restrictions on obtaining foreign currency at that time Walton became desperate to pay for Alice's medical expenses. It so happened that Menuhin was also holidaying in Lucerne and, when the two men met, Menuhin obliged Walton with 2,000 francs on condition that he write a violin and piano sonata for him and his friend, Louis Kentner. (The Sonata is dedicated to their respective wives, Diana and Griselda.)
In April 1948 Alice Wimborne died and, in what seemed an impulsive emotional escape, Walton got married in January 1949 to an Argentinian girl, Susana (with whom he remained for the rest of his life); the Sonata was finished shortly afterwards and reflects his deep love for Alice and the torment of her death.
It was given its first performance in Zurich's Tonhalle on 30 September 1949. Its first London performance took place in the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, a year later - once again with Yehudi Menuhin and Louis Kentner as the artists.
The first movement in B flat major is in sonata form and exploits the lyrical and melodic qualities of both instruments; it also reflects the emotions of sadness, passion and anger which Walton was experiencing at the time.
There are seven variations in the second movement, the theme of which is reminiscent of material in the first movement. The first variation is a two-part counterpoint in 6/8 time; the second is lyrical and rapturous with special attention paid to the theme's high notes; the third is a march; the fourth is very spiky, living up to its strepitoso marking; the fifth contrasts piano arabesques with pizzicato on the violin; there is a short violin cadenza before the end. The brief sixth variation treats the theme expressively and expansively. A short coda starts out as a fugue and then decides not to be, ending the whole movement in a blaze of glory,
Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press
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