PROGRAM NOTES
by Dr. Richard E. Rodda

Symphony No. 1 in B-flat minor
Sir William Walton (1902-1983)

Composed in 1933-1935.
Premiered on November 6, 1935 in London, conducted by Sir Hamilton Harty.

Sir William Walton (he was knighted in 1951) was the son of two musicians (his mother was a singing teacher; his father, the local church choirmaster) and reports have it (though, unfortunately, without elucidating details) that he was singing Handel anthems before he could speak. Piano and violin lessons followed before he was packed off to the Choir School at Christ Church, Oxford when he was ten because his father knew the educational opportunities to be better there than in provincial Oldham, the family’s hometown. At sixteen, Walton entered Christ Church College, but he was so absorbed with his musical studies that he failed all his other subjects and soon left the university. Perhaps the most important thing that he acquired at Oxford was his friendship with the Sitwells — Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell — a family of station, wealth and immense culture who recognized an outstanding talent in the young musician. He moved into their home in London after coming down from Oxford, and there received encouragement, advice and inspiration. Dame Edith wrote a series of witty, often satirical poems for him, which he set as Façade. This “Entertainment for Reciter and Chamber Ensemble,” as the composer described it, caused enough of a stir when it was first heard in 1922 (Walton was 20) to bring him to the attention of the musical world. The Portsmouth Point Overture and the Viola Concerto followed soon thereafter, and the oratorio Belshazzar’s Feast of 1931 lifted the young Walton to international fame.

Though Walton’s early reputation rested mainly on the iconoclastic Façade and the technicolor Belshazzar’s Feast, his excellent Viola Concerto of 1927 had convinced his admirers that he was capable of exploring further in the larger musical genres, and they urged him to try a symphony. In 1933, he accepted their challenge. Work on the new piece went well, at least at first. He agreed to a performance late in 1934, and the London Symphony Orchestra and conductor Sir Hamilton Harty engaged Queen’s Hall for December 3rd. As the date neared, however, Walton had finished the first three movements but was quite stuck on the finale. (Characteristically a slow worker, he spent seven months searching for the proper setting of the word “Gold” when writing Belshazzar’s Feast.) The performance went ahead as planned, however, so that when the Symphony was first heard, on December 3, 1934, it lacked a finale. The following summer Walton completed the score, and Harty gave the premiere of the definitive version in London on November 6, 1935 with the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

As do all the great 20th-century symphonies, Walton’s Symphony No. 1 blends tradition with modernity: Beethoven’s rigorous process of motivic development is here coupled with Elgar’s orchestral heartiness, Stravinsky’s rhythmic electricity and Sibelius’ formal control. Yet the result is distinctively the work of Walton, “a completely sincere personal utterance,” according to David Cox. Eschewing Classical formal types, Walton instead evolved each movement organically from the melodic fragments given in its opening measures — a process of continual musical growth whose roots lie in Baroque music as well as in that of Beethoven. The opening Allegro assai is developed from four thematic fragments heard within the first thirty seconds: a harmonic pyramid played by the horns; a nervous repeated rhythmic motive from the violins; a long-note melody with a closing flourish in the oboe; and a large-interval cell initiated by the basses. The movement is largely a brilliant development and intertwining of these pregnant motives, much of it harmonically anchored to extended pedal notes in the bass which serve to define broad tonal areas. The movement, filled with high tension and serious emotion little tempered by lighter thoughts, launches Walton’s symphonic argument with superb power and purpose.

The scherzo (Presto, con malizia — “with malice”) continues the opening movement’s rugged sentiments, to which are added the biting cynicism indicated by its tempo marking. The slow movement (Andante con malinconia [“melancholy”]) grows from the long, plaintive melody intoned by the solo flute in the opening measures. It is largely by the woodwinds, in solo and in ensemble, that this expressive theme is spun out in elaboration. The finale, brighter in spirit and more festive in sonority than the earlier movements, comprises four sections. A sweeping introductory stanza is proclaimed by the full orchestra as preface to the main body of the finale — a rousing paragraph whose rhythmic exuberance and brilliant orchestration recall the grandest moments of Belshazzar’s Feast. This section closes with a fugue. The third section, begun after a unison blast from trumpets and trombones and a brief pause, resumes the blazing brilliance of the preceding music with heightened enthusiasm, and finishes, too, with a fugue. The strains of the finale’s opening section return as a majestic processional to close this masterpiece of English orchestral music.

MORE NOTES ON THIS PROGRAM

SIBELIUS - Lemminkainen's Return
BRAHMS - Violin Concerto

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