Customer Reviews

Walton: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 2 / Cello Concerto / Violin Concerto

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Yet another gem in the budget firmament: A riveting "two-fer" from the EMI Double Forte catalogue, completely cost efficient, fully-packed with absolutely prime Walton--- no, make that essential Walton--- top-notch performances of each and every work, and excellent sound throughout. Haitink's reading of Symphony No. 1, with the Philharmonia, is a taut, arching, powerfully sustained fifty-one minute excursion into orchestral flourish and color, held beautifully together by its "Andante Con Malinconia" third movement. The more generally moody, less exhuberant Symphony No. 2 finds complete empathy in Previn's hands, the LSO playing just gloriously.

Both concertos--- balancing Walton's romantic ideals with his pronounced 20th century leanings--- find warmly brilliant advocates in cellist Tortelier, violinist Ida Haendel, conductor Berglund and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra.

The overtures, rhythmically good-natured, are excellent additions and rollicking fun under Previn.

[Running time--- CD 1: 78:04 CD 2: 73:24]

Walton, outside of the UK is sort of a footnote, the composer who came between Elgar and Britten. I actually like the works on this release, but there is another collection which includes Previn conducting the 1st symphony, Heifetz playing the violin concerto, which sounds totally different in his hands, and an excellent recording of the viola concerto with Bashmet which is probably my favorite single recording of any Walton work. It costs slightly more than this collection but is well worth it. The second symphony received a better performance/recording from Szell and Cleveland during the 1960's.

The amusingly splenetic review listed below will mystify newcomers to Walton. He is revered as a pioneering modernist in England, aging into a thorny national institution. Walton's idiom was brash and macho, but touched by romanticism and forever faithful to tonality. In America his equivalent would be William Schuman, equally aggressive but timid as modernism goes.

Both composers survive through a handful of works. Depending on how you look at it, Walton was lucky or unlucky to strike gold once only in each genre: he wrote one great film score (Henry V), one march (Crown Imperial), one overture (Portsmouth Point), one concerto (for viola), and one symphony (the First). His multiple attempts to follow up these successes generally fell flat.

For some listeners, however, Walton's entire output is despicable. Either they are offended by his "ripoffs from Sibelius," as our raging reviewer calls them--Walton was a magpie of scraps from better composers. Or else his music just falls badly on the ear. I certainly feel that way about Belshazzar's Feast, a beloved choral staple in the UK that makes my skin crawl, as does Walton's sophisticated whimsy in Facade, set to poetic trifles by Edith Sitwell. Sit well is what his music often doesn't.

I find that Haitink's civilized version of Sym. #1 makes a good case for it by erasing some of its bluntness and malice (yes, Walton's harsher music strikes some critics as outright malicious). It is better recorded and played than Previn's Telarc version with the Royal Phil. I also enjoyed the brief Portsmouth Point, but you have to be a Walton fan to get much from the other works on this bargain two-fer. Even the beloved Ida Haendel couldn't get me to warm up to the violin concreto. I like Walton's first tries and that's about it.

First, the music on this set is very good. The proximate reason for my buying it was hearing Sym #2 in the car, and it was so interesting I stayed sitting in the car until the end to see what this wonderful, romantic yet modern music was. But this set, like most such 2-fers, and even many full priced discs, suffers from dumb programming. It's as though the manufacturers think merely cramming a bunch of music onto a disc creates a good value. On each of these discs, the big symphony is first and the concertos are last, making 2 decidedly anti-climactic and unsatisfactory listening experiences. I won't even go into 2 overtures in a row AFTER a big symphony! Silly will suffice. This all leads me to a couple of conclusions. One is that the folks who make classical CD's have never been to a concert, because if they had, they would know the big symhony is always last. Second, is that they never listen to the discs they make, again, because if they did, and possessed an ounce of common sense, they would notice how anti-climactically frustrating their programming is. They might also notice, big fluctuations in volume between pieces, adding to the annoying properties of their work. In short, this is still good music, but program it yourself.

I had the great misfortune to listen to the Walton Symphony No. 1 recently. Although I am not generally a fan of English composers after Purcell, I wanted to be openminded and listened to the entire piece. It was extremely difficult not to burst out laughing at the beginning and end of the slow movement, since both are shamelessly plagiarized from the slow movement of the Sibelius Fourth. The finale began with a similarly laughable rip-off from a Sibelius finale, and proceeded to a deadpan academic fugato (!!!!) -- shades of neo-Victorianism, the ghost of Mendelssohn and Handel, no doubt? -- but most preposterous of all is the end of the finale. After bars and bars of deafeningly loud clangor, for little internal musical or logical reason, we are treated to yet another Sibelius rip-off: namely a borrowing of the end of the finale of the Sibelius Fifth (i.e. stark, individual chords isolated from each other by silences). The score is loaded with tawdry, agogic effects-for-effects' sake, reminding one that Walton made his bread by film music. This is the musical equivalent of "cold spaghetti on toast," something only consumed in the UK. If you can think this helpless eclecticism and cheap striving for effects is serious musical modernity, you obviously have no understanding of real modernism (i.e. Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Stravinsky, Boulez... all coincidentally not English!). The sad thing is that Walton felt obliged to put these silly Sibelius rip-offs in to legitimize himself within a backward, anti-modern un-musical province whose idolatry of Sibelius is mystifying (although perhaps it fits with the equally mystifying English worship of Handel's Messiah and of poor academic Mendelssohn, who wrote his worst music in England, like the dreadful "St. Paul"). Even among English quasi-"moderns," this piece is inferior to Tippett's first two symphonies, or some of Britten's better work; nor can it hold a candle to Elgar at his best. If one wants "moderate modernism" (i.e. not atonality), there are still far better 20th century tonal composers to be discovered, like Roussel, Nielsen, Enesco, or some of Martinu... (I found myself longing for even the honest trashiness of, say, Copland's Third Symphony, which is vulgar but at least vividly so.) - A piece of sheer musical perversity. -