Sir William Walton: Collected Works

With the symphony any performance that is not forceful and spiky would be a non-starter, and it is good to hear Previn's 1967 LSO account with the sound freshened up. The brass blast away as if this were Bartok or Shostakovich at their fiercest, and if you view Walton as a radical this is the performance for you. For me this symphony, for all its dissonance, is as faithful to the 19th century scheme as Elgar's are. Simultaneously with Previn there appeared a version from Sargent and the New Philharmonia with Walton himself involved in some way. Speeds are by and large similar but the overall impression is of grandeur rather than ferocity, and to this day I like it better in general. You can hear the difference in approach from the very first bar with the ultra-hushed and absolutely smooth timpani-roll from Sargent. Oddly, where Previn scores most, for me, is in the slow movement where he captures the loneliness and melancholy better, helped by a slower tempo. It's the Previn approach that has prevailed, and I don't think Sargent is now available.

Previn is the conductor in both versions of the viola concerto that I own, using the 1962 reorchestration. Bashmet is more introverted and less serene than Kennedy, but both are first-rate. If it were just a matter of this one piece I would still recommend Kennedy who benefits from a fuller and richer recorded sound, but we are dealing here with an entire package also containing two concerto performances of unique authority. The package is completed by an interesting version of the sinfonia concertante in its original form, apparently preferred by Walton to his revised score, and the late and very un-radical cello concerto played by its dedicatee. This is probably not a work that arouses fierce disputes regarding the merits of alternative versions, and anyone owning the Piatigorsky account will likely leave it at that, especially as P is in his familiar partnership with Munch, not one to let a performance sag.

I adore Walton. He did not change the language of music in any but superficial ways, but his genius was truly original and he performed a major act of mercy by jolting English music out of what Constant Lambert called the cowpat school, to which music-lovers of similar prejudices to mine are either deaf or wish we were - I operate to a crude rule of thumb that any composer who has inflicted musical settings on Housman or who has an excessive interest in English folk-music is a composer to avoid. As an early sign of Walton's fine discernment I note that he took exceptional measures to avoid being sent back to Oldham. Sound judge indeed.