Walton Violin Concerto Pdf Writer

1. Andante tranquillo
2. Presto capriccioso alla napolitana – Trio (Canzonetta) – Tempo I
3. Vivace

William Walton Violin Concerto. Original 1939 version - conductor's score and parts on hire. Forces or Category: Solo violin & full orchestra. Orchestration: 2 fl (II+picc), 2 ob (II+ca), 2 cl, 2 bn, 4 hn, 2 tpt, 3 tbn, timp, 2 perc, hp, str Percussion: sd, bd, cym, tamb, xyl, cast, glock, gong. For solo violin and full orchestra. QIAN ZHOU, violin JASON LAI, conductor YST Conservatory Orchestra Intersections: Conservatory Orchestra Pre-Tour Concert 9 April 2019 Esplanade Concert Hall.

It may come as a surprise to see the regional and largely unfamiliar New Haven Symphony Orchestra on the fairly mainstream British label Nimbus, especially in a thorny work like William Walton's Symphony No. The occasion is a Walton project undertaken by the Beinecke rare book library at Yale University, which owns a substantial collection of Walton materials and made them available for study. The Violin Concerto of William Walton was written in 1938–39 and dedicated to Jascha Heifetz, who performed it at its premiere on 7 December 1939 in Cleveland.Walton later re-orchestrated the concerto in 1943. Category:Walton, William/Collections (The following text was automatically transcluded from Category:Walton, William.) All works by this person are still under copyright in Canada, the EU, Japan, and elsewhere and are thus subject to deletion.

Walton composed his Violin Concerto in 1938 and 1939. Considering the agonisingly slow pace at which he habitually worked, it is perhaps an exaggeration to say that he was at the height of his compositional powers at the time. Nevertheless, the previous decade had seen the emergence of the three large-scale masterpieces – the Viola Concerto, Belshazzar’s Feast and the Symphony No. 1 – on which, combined with the present concerto and a few shorter works, Walton’s reputation securely rests.

The Violin Concerto was commissioned by the great virtuoso Jascha Heifetz, whom Walton had first met in 1936. In May 1939 Walton made a short visited to the USA to work with Heifetz on refining details in the solo part. But by the time of the premiere, in December of that year, with Artur Rodziński conducting the Cleveland Orchestra, Britain was at war and Walton was unable to risk the crossing to the USA to hear it.

The initial stages of the work’s composition had taken place in 1938, in Ravello, Italy, where Alice Wimborne, his partner at the time, had taken Walton to recover from surgery. Ever since he first visited the country as an 18-year-old, Italy had been Walton’s spiritual home and the concerto undoubtedly reflects this love. It is suffused with Italianate warmth and a lyrical, singing quality reflecting not only the influence of bel canto opera, but, perhaps even more prominently, Italian popular song. Temperamentally, too, it displays Latinate volatility, with capricious changes of mood at every turn. Throughout the work, often without warning, lyrical contemplation may yield to spiteful aggression, melancholic introspection to choleric rage. The productive influence of other composers can be felt at various points: Prokofiev, Hindemith and especially Elgar, whose own Violin Concerto was clearly the inspiration for the finale’s accompanied cadenza.

The Violin Concerto is the second of Walton’s three string concertos. The others – for Viola (1928–9, revised 1936–7, 1961) and for Cello (1955–6, rev. 1975) – share the same three-movement plan, with more moderately paced outer movements framing a central scherzo.

The opening plunges straight into the heart of the matter with the soloist immediately unfolding one of Walton’s greatest and most memorable melodies. The rising accompanying line in the bassoon is important, too: not only will this form the basis of some of the fast music later on, but when the opening is finally recapitulated the two themes are swapped round, with the rising line now taken by the violin and the main melody by the orchestra. Such is Walton’s extraordinary technical dexterity throughout the work. Even more remarkable is the variety of moods encompassed in this movement. Having established a decidedly nocturnal atmosphere (the main tune is marked sognando – ‘dreaming’), the peace is shattered by a vicious orchestral outburst, full of snarling brass and aggressive cross-rhythms. It is left to the solo violin gradually to calm the mood and to restore a measure of tranquillity, though a second aggressive assault later on sees the soloist taking no part in proceedings. The final phase of the movement recapitulates the opening themes, now with the addition of many felicitous decorations and counter-melodies.

The second movement is a multi-faceted scherzo. With its marking alla Napolitana (in Neapolitan style) it is the most obviously Italianate of the three movements. It begins as a tarantella (Walton had been bitten by a tarantula shortly before composing the movement, so is said to have included this to mark the event!), but suddenly switches course and turns into a slow waltz that might be mistaken for sentimentality, were it not so laced with irony. A brief return to the tarantella leads into a central Trio, described in the score as a Canzonetta – a reference to a type of light-hearted madrigal, popular in 16th-century Italy. This slow section is allowed to luxuriate for some time before the tarantella bursts in again with an extended display of virtuoso fiddling, a final brief reference to the ironic waltz and a sudden evaporation.

The finale has the character of a rondo, the busy, yet measured, counterpoint of the opening appearing four times. In between, gorgeously lyrical interludes, led by the soloist and often supported by harp and shimmering strings, gradually unlock memories of themes heard earlier in the concerto. Eventually, a rapturous, Elgarian cadenza, discreetly supported by the orchestra, ingeniously draws the concerto’s thematic threads together, before a brief return to the movement’s opening heralds a final flourish – as emphatic an end as any concerto could wish for, but with an added dash of Waltonian unpredictability.

Programme note © John Pickard

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The initial stages of the work’s composition had taken place in 1938, in Ravello, Italy, where Alice Wimborne, his partner at the time, had taken Walton to recover from surgery. Ever since he first visited the country as an 18-year-old, Italy had been Walton’s spiritual home and the concerto undoubtedly reflects this love. It is suffused with Italianate warmth and a lyrical, singing quality reflecting not only the influence of bel canto opera, but, perhaps even more prominently, Italian popular song. Temperamentally, too, it displays Latinate volatility, with capricious changes of mood at every turn. Throughout the work, often without warning, lyrical contemplation may yield to spiteful aggression, melancholic introspection to choleric rage. The productive influence of other composers can be felt at various points: Prokofiev, Hindemith and especially Elgar, whose own Violin Concerto was clearly the inspiration for the finale’s accompanied cadenza.

The Violin Concerto is the second of Walton’s three string concertos. The others – for Viola (1928–9, revised 1936–7, 1961) and for Cello (1955–6, rev. 1975) – share the same three-movement plan, with more moderately paced outer movements framing a central scherzo.

The opening plunges straight into the heart of the matter with the soloist immediately unfolding one of Walton’s greatest and most memorable melodies. The rising accompanying line in the bassoon is important, too: not only will this form the basis of some of the fast music later on, but when the opening is finally recapitulated the two themes are swapped round, with the rising line now taken by the violin and the main melody by the orchestra. Such is Walton’s extraordinary technical dexterity throughout the work. Even more remarkable is the variety of moods encompassed in this movement. Having established a decidedly nocturnal atmosphere (the main tune is marked sognando – ‘dreaming’), the peace is shattered by a vicious orchestral outburst, full of snarling brass and aggressive cross-rhythms. It is left to the solo violin gradually to calm the mood and to restore a measure of tranquillity, though a second aggressive assault later on sees the soloist taking no part in proceedings. The final phase of the movement recapitulates the opening themes, now with the addition of many felicitous decorations and counter-melodies.

The second movement is a multi-faceted scherzo. With its marking alla Napolitana (in Neapolitan style) it is the most obviously Italianate of the three movements. It begins as a tarantella (Walton had been bitten by a tarantula shortly before composing the movement, so is said to have included this to mark the event!), but suddenly switches course and turns into a slow waltz that might be mistaken for sentimentality, were it not so laced with irony. A brief return to the tarantella leads into a central Trio, described in the score as a Canzonetta – a reference to a type of light-hearted madrigal, popular in 16th-century Italy. This slow section is allowed to luxuriate for some time before the tarantella bursts in again with an extended display of virtuoso fiddling, a final brief reference to the ironic waltz and a sudden evaporation.

The finale has the character of a rondo, the busy, yet measured, counterpoint of the opening appearing four times. In between, gorgeously lyrical interludes, led by the soloist and often supported by harp and shimmering strings, gradually unlock memories of themes heard earlier in the concerto. Eventually, a rapturous, Elgarian cadenza, discreetly supported by the orchestra, ingeniously draws the concerto’s thematic threads together, before a brief return to the movement’s opening heralds a final flourish – as emphatic an end as any concerto could wish for, but with an added dash of Waltonian unpredictability.

Programme note © John Pickard

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