WALTON CELLO CONCERTO Walton as Gershwin and Stravinsky. Eager to move on SHOSTAKOVICH CELLO CONCERTO NO.1 Cello Concerto to matters more serious than Façade, Walton in the later 1920s and 30s began to develop his own After leaving Oxford University in 1920, having take on more traditional classical forms with his William Walton (1902 - 1983) failed to pass his degree, it didn’t take William overture, Portsmouth Point, the First Symphony, Cello Concerto Walton more than a couple of years to make his the oratorio, Belshazzar’s Feast and the Viola first indelible mark on the British musical scene. Concerto – all of which made speedy inroads into 1 Allegro moderato [8.06] ‘As a musical joker, he is a jewel of the first permanently entering the standard repertory. 2 Allegro appassionato [7.02] order’ wrote the eminent critic Ernest Newman, 3 Lento – Allegro molto (1975 Revision*) [14.23] after a performance of the young composer’s During the Second World War, Walton set aside his ‘entertainment’, Façade. Still only in his early ‘serious’ compositional side and set to work on Dmitri Shostakovich (1906 - 1975) twenties, Walton threw in to this miscellany for a number of patriotic film projects, the most Cello Concerto No.1 in E flat major, Op.107 speaker and instruments every influence he could memorable being Henry V and The First of 4 Allegretto [6.17] find in the musical palate of the day: cabaret, the Few. The latter of these dramatised the 5 Moderato [11.49] the fox-trot, charleston and other popular dances, development of the Spitfire fighter plane, and 6 Cadenza [5.19] all the rage at the time, were mixed with ragtime, from it Walton extracted the spectacular Spitfire nascent jazz. Even Stravinsky and Schoenberg Prelude and Fugue, which stands beside his 7 Allegro con moto [5.08] make their presence felt through influences from two coronation works, Crown Imperial and Solo horn – Nigel Black The Soldier’s Tale and Pierrot lunaire respectively. Orb and Sceptre as stalwarts of any celebration During this period, Walton had been staying of Britishness to this day. After the war, Walton’s Bonus Track – Walton, Cello Concerto: with Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell Sitwell. As an fame as arguably Britain’s key composer since 8 Lento – Allegro molto (1956 Original) [14.14] elected family member of these well-connected Vaughan Williams was gradually eroded by the literary types, Walton was introduced to many inexorable rise of Benjamin Britten who was Total timings: [56.15] of the most glittering figures on the arts scene achieving great success with his operas. On a * World Première Recording between the wars. He could count Cecil Beaton, level of acquaintance and musical respect, Siegfried Sassoon, Lytton Strachey, Noel Coward Walton and Britten were generally on good and Constant Lambert as friends or, at very terms, but there was also a little sliver of envy JAMIE WALTON CELLO least, sometime acquaintances and also met in Walton for the younger composer’s level of PHILHARMONIA ORCHESTRA ALEXANDER BRIGER CONDUCTOR some of the major composers of the age, such fame and perceived protean productivity. Walton www.signumrecords.com - 3 - himself often complained about the difficulty he other than Paul Hindemith. Composed between The first movement’s opening ‘tick-tock’ vacillation construction’. In 1936, with the arts now under experienced when trying to set a work down on February and October 1956, the Cello Concerto immediately makes the listener think of Walton centralized control under the All-Union Committee manuscript paper. But he was steadily broadening was likewise commissioned and first performed the film composer, such is its portentous effect. on Artistic Affairs, the tide was turning against his own niche with subtle developments in tone by another instrumental titan, in this case Gregor But before long the cello slowly unwinds a any composers with ‘formalist’ tendencies. Stalin and sophistication which the Cello Concerto and Piatigorsky. The premiere took place in Boston, beautiful, long, dark melody which, together attended a performance of Lady Macbeth in other works, such as the opera Troilus and on 25 January 1957, with Charles Munch conducting with the ‘ticking’, provides the main meat and January of that year and was offended by the Cressida, the Variations on a Theme by Hindemith the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Walton’s reputation mood of the movement. The following Allegro forthrightness of the subject matter and and the Second Symphony attest. As to the in America was immediately vastly enhanced is a very nervy affair with virtuosic writing for Shostakovich’s advanced musical language. Two perception that Walton did indeed find composition by the occasion. However, back in London, there the soloist in music which flashes and flickers days later, the now notorious Pravda editorial a painful process, his wife Susana seems to was a rather mixed reception to it, as there had in a manner akin to many of Walton’s earlier appeared describing Lady Macbeth under both confirm and deny this in the same sentence been to the composer’s previous work, Troilus and compositions. The finale, a theme with variations, the headline ‘Muddle instead of Music’ as a when writing about the Cello Concerto itself: Cressida. For his part, Walton was very happy with or ‘improvisations’ as the composer labelled ‘discordant, confused stream of sounds … the the work. Piatigorsky, though, entered into lengthy them, has the solo cello and orchestra essentially music cracks, grunts and growls’. A few days ‘[Walton] thought of the cello as a melancholy correspondence with Walton over the matter of alternate the variations. A spectacular array of later, his ballet, The Limpid Stream, which was instrument, full of soul; accordingly, he wrote how the concerto should end, and the composer, moods, from tender to fierce and rhapsodic to in the repertory of the Bolshoi Ballet at the a rather sad tune to the opening...He certainly interviewed in 1977, admitted that, ‘I didn’t have restrained, are essayed before the cello ends the time, fared no better under the banner, ‘Balletic had a special affection for the Cello Concerto as any [doubts] till many years later. Then I thought, drama by dropping down to its lowest open string, Falsehood’. Although now seen as preposterous and it had come very spontaneously, and he felt it ‘Perhaps he’s right’.’ The present recording allowing the orchestra to conclude the work in a philistine, at the time these were unprecedented was the closest to his personality’. resurrects a 22 bar replacement conclusion to mood of easeful repose. articles. Pravda, the official organ of Soviet the work, which was composed in 1974, fulfilling Communism, disapproved in language verging Following the success of the Viola and Violin Piatigorsky’s request for ‘a less melancholy Shostakovich upon the violent; the ‘cheap clowning’ of Lady Concertos, Walton must have had high hopes ending’. Approved by Piatigorsky, he alas did Cello Concerto No.1 in E flat, Op.107 Macbeth being chillingly described as ‘a game of for his third essay in the genre. After all, the not live long enough to publicly premiere the clever ingenuity that may end very badly’. The extrovert, vivid Violin Concerto had been revision and it has remained unrecorded and As a 27-year-old, in 1934, Shostakovich had party had spoken - this music was not to be commissioned by the great Jascha Heifetz, who unperformed until now. In a recording first, a runaway, worldwide success with his opera, imitated and the works in question disappeared both premiered it and recorded it for the first Jamie Walton has elected to restore William Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, which from the repertory forthwith. time. The earlier Viola Concerto had been written Walton’s final thoughts on the concerto whilst was regarded as a high-water mark in Soviet for the virtuoso, Lionel Tertis, but was eventually also setting down the original ending, which opera and was praised by the authorities as, Although the ramifications of the editorials were performed, to much critical acclaim by none appears in this recording as a bonus track. ‘the result of the general success of socialist not immediately clear, the aftershocks rippled - 4 - - 5 - rapidly through Soviet culture. With Stalin gearing Krushchev now in power and de-Stalinisation in entered Shostakovich’s composition class in 1943. Shostakovich was no different from all great up for the first of the infamous Moscow show the air, the dark Winter of Stalin appeared to be Their good friendship seems to have remained composers who are moved by the great talents trials later in the year, and the Great Purge thawing into a new spring for the Soviet Union. In tinged with a master-pupil relationship, though of performing artists to write for them, and so hot on their heels, everyone had to watch their 1958 Shostakovich was awarded the Lenin Prize Shostakovich was not short on kindnesses such Rostropovich eventually got his concerto and step. Shostakovich had been working on his for his Eleventh Symphony, despite it often being as helping to fund the young man’s first concert performed it with the Leningrad Philharmonic colossal, modernist Fourth Symphony for some thought of as apparently disguised protest suit. That both of Shostakovich’s concertos were Orchestra under the direction of Evgeni Mravinsky time, but it no longer suited the mood of the against Russia’s brutal demolition of the written specifically for Rostropovich is testimony on 4 October 1959. One of the great cello concertos times and he was forced to withdraw it during Hungarian uprising of October 1956. It appealed enough to the esteem in which the composer held of the last century or so, Shostakovich, when asked rehearsals, in December 1936.