2015 Program Notes, Book 2 |
37
Tertis [perhaps the greatest solo violist of the early 20th century]. When it was finished
[in 1929] I sent it to Tertis, who turned it down sharply by return of post, which depressed
me a good deal as virtuoso violists were scarce. However, Edward Clark, who at that time
was in charge of the music section of the BBC, suggested we should go to Hindemith.
So I duly conducted Hindemith in it at the first performance at a Proms concert in 1929.
Tertis came and was won over, and he played the work whenever he had the chance.”
Hindemith, of course, was the German composer Paul Hindemith, who was not only one
of the 20th-century’s master creative musicians but also a virtuoso performer on viola. The
Concerto won an immediate success for Walton, and it was the first of his works to excite
international recognition of his talent; it was chosen for performance at the International
Festival of Contemporary Music at Liège in 1930, and has been regularly performed ever
since. The work was revised in 1962, when Walton reduced its orchestration from triple to
double woodwinds but added a harp.
The Viola Concerto demonstrated a remarkable maturity of technique and
expression from the 26-year-old Walton. It solves with expert craftsmanship the difficult
problem of balancing orchestra and viola, whose sonority and middle-register tessitura
make it so easily absorbed into the instrumental texture, by relying primarily on strands
of accompanimental counterpoint rather than on homophonic block scoring. As would
the later concertos for violin (1939) and cello (1956), the Viola Concerto surrounds a
fast, scherzo-like central movement with music of greater introspection. The opening
movement of each concerto is slow in tempo and lyrical in nature, while the finale
recalls thematic material from the earlier movements to round out the composition’s
overall formal structure. In the style and construction of the Viola Concerto, Walton
found a most satisfying meeting of tradition and modernity, one which carries forward
the language and formal principles of 19th-century Romanticism while expanding
them in a distinctly personal manner: “Walton’s style is not sentimental; but neither is it
anti-romantic,” wrote Sir Donald Tovey in his admiring analysis of the piece.
The opening movement begins with rocking figures in the orchestral strings and
clarinet as a preface to the viola’s broadly lyrical main theme, whose opening interval
(a minor third) is a motto from which much of the later melodic material is derived.
A contrasting idea, first given by the viola above a pizzicato string accompaniment,
becomes more rhythmically animated and leads into the development section,
initiated with a fierce and strongly rhythmic transformation of the main theme. Motivic
elements from both of the earlier themes are worked out and augmented with new
material before the music softens to usher in the return of the main theme by the oboe
and flute as a brief epilogue. “The whole movement,” wrote Sir Donald Tovey, “must
convince every listener [that it is] a masterpiece of form in its freedom and precision,
besides showing pathos of a high order.”
The residue of Walton’s experience with jazz is abundantly evident in the rhythmic
animation of the second movement, a scherzo built from the ingenious elaborations
and interweavings of three themes: a bounding, syncopated motive first given by the
viola (with tiny flashing echoes in clarinet and bassoon); a quick, staccato figure in the
brass; and a bold strain begun by the soloist in multiple stops.
The finale is launched by an insouciant melody in the bassoon, which is soon taken
up for contrapuntal discussion by the viola and some of the orchestral entourage. A
transition based on a close-interval triplet figure in the viola leads to the second theme,
a sad, sighing melody in almost-too-sweet double stops. The balance of the movement
is given over to superbly inventive elaborations of the thematic material, and is capped
by a closing section in which the themes of the finale are masterfully combined with
those of the first movement. Tovey offered the following summary of Walton’s Viola
Concerto: “The listener will become convinced that the total import of the work is that
Wednesday, June 24, 2015
