It was always going to be a marriage made in heaven. From everything we know about John Wilson as a conductor — his love for classic Hollywood film scores, the virtuoso playing he brings to all his performances — there was one composer who would be right up his street.
William Walton (1902-83) could do with a champion. Even during his lifetime Walton came to be viewed as out of step, a romantic at a time when the hardline, modernist majority ruled, but there is so much more to him than his best-known works, Belshazzar’s Feast and the First Symphony.
This recording promises to be the first of a Walton series from Wilson and his crack orchestra, the Sinfonia of London. It opens with the symphonic suite made by Christopher Palmer from Troilus and Cressida, Walton’s only full-length opera, containing some of his most intoxicating music.
It is worth remembering that Walton was a skilled composer of film scores (Henry V, The First of the Few). Imagine a 1950s imperial Roman widescreen epic, sporting Puccini-like love music and swaggering, military muscle, orchestrated with glittering flair. That is Troilus and Cressida and Wilson plays it with more fervour than ever before.
The main work is the Violin Concerto, more familiar but still not a repertoire piece. There is more competition among recordings here, but soloist Charlie Lovell-Jones and Wilson have quicksilver virtuosity and orchestral clarity on their side. A typically bracing performance of Portsmouth Point heralds what should be a first-rate Walton series.
★★★★★
‘Walton: Violin Concerto’ is released by Chandos