William Walton (Born 1902; died 1983)
Occupying an important historical position between his better-known colleagues Ralph Vaughan Williams and Benjamin Britten, William Walton has won widespread recognition as the first modern British composer to approach the brilliance and vitality that characterized English music during Handel's day.
Born in northwest England during the first years of the twentieth century, Walton was the son of a choirmaster and – appropriately – served as a chorister at Christ Church Cathedral at Oxford from 1912 to 1918. Studies at the university itself proved unsatisfying, and William left Oxford without a degree in 1920, relying instead upon the patronage of the Sitwell family, who had befriended the young composer. Through the influence of this affluent and well-known family, Walton was able to break into the London music scene, and – by 1922 – his chamber piece Façade had achieved some popularity with the concert-going public.
A performance of his comic overture Portsmouth Point in Zurich in 1926 and Paul Hindemith's championing of his Viola Concerto in 1929 helped introduce Walton music into the European music scene. The famous Belshazzar's Feast for chorus and orchestra soon followed, and the 1930s brought commissions from well-known musical figures, including Jascha Heifetz, who asked the composer to write him a Violin Concerto in 1939.
Walton spent much of World War II composing music for films, including Next of Kin and The Foreman Went to France. In 1948, he moved to Ischia, a small island off of Naples, and earned knighthood in 1951. In 1954, after many years of effort, his grand opera Troilus and Cressida premiered at Covent Garden; unfortunately, the work has not received the attention it deserves.
Walton composed prolifically until the end of his life, fulfilling commissions for such notables as George Szell, Gregor Piatigorsky, and Mstislav Rostropovich. In 1973, he conducted a fiftieth-anniversary performance of Facade. While never again achieving the degree of public and critical acclaim that he enjoyed before the World War II, he was nevertheless able to live comfortably on Ischia, where he died in 1983.
Although overshadowed in the latter half of his career by Benjamin Britten, Walton was never the old-fashioned reactionary (a frequent, but unjust, accusation). Much like his contemporaries Poulenc and Prokofiev, Walton was at heart an expressive, lyric composer, who refused to subjugate this natural ability to the "modernist" tendencies that the press berated him for not embracing. His music is a sparkling synthesis of old and new, the greatest examples of which can be found in the two Symphonies (1935 and 1960), and the Viola (1929), Violin (1939) and Cello (1956) Concertos.
Belshazzar's Feast, for baritone, double chorus & orchestra
Instrumentation: 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, clarinets, bass clarinet, E-flat clarinet, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, alto saxophone or English Horn, 4 French horns, 9 trumpets, 9 trombones, 3 tubas, timpani plus 4 percussion, 2 harps, (optional) piano, organ, strings
This is the first time the DPO has performed this piece.
In 1929, Walton received the first commission the BBC ever offered to a British composer for a work "scored for small chorus, small orchestra not exceeding fifteen [players], and soloist." For the work's subject, Walton chose the biblical fall of Belshazzar (better known as Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, the despotic conqueror of Jerusalem), which Sir Osbert Sitwell – his friend and benefactor – had dramatized. By the end of 1930, a member of the BBC's music staff nervously reported that Walton's effort had "grown to such proportions that it cannot be considered a work specially written for broadcasting."
Nevertheless, the composer completed it and on a grand scale, including two brass bands. Before the premiere in October 1931, the chorus called a strike, saying that the work was impossibly difficult to perform. The composer deflected the complaint thus: "I know it is difficult...but naturally it isn't written for a church choir." The sweep and drama of the work, which critic Compton Mackenzie described as "like a great explosive sunset," has since proved irresistible to audiences. The eminent British conductor Henry Wood considered it "truly marvelous, like the world coming to an end."
The scene provides a description of the material wealth of Babylon (a substantial section, which Thomas Beecham irreverently called "the shopping list"), including "the souls of men." The raw energy as the oppressors praise their gods of silver, brass, gold, and other precious possessions leads to a chorus of profound lamentation as the Israelites contemplate their fate and affirm their belief in God.
As the feasting at Belshazzar's palace becomes wilder and more abandoned, a mysterious Hebrew message appears on the wall: "mene mene tekel uparsin" (You have been weighed in the balance and found wanting). Nemesis is swift: "that night was the king Belshazzar slain and his kingdom divided."
Walton wrote music in the grand manner with utmost confidence, and his orchestration, brilliant and evocative, stands in sharp contrast to that of the works that – from Handel onward – formed the major part of the English choral tradition.
Biography by Blair Johnston
Composition Description by Roy Brewer
Source: All Media Guide
To Concert Page
