English Song Series, Vol. 2 - Walton

View record and artist details

Record and Artist Details

Composer or Director: William Walton

Label: Collins Classics

Magazine Review Date: 10/1997

Media Format: CD or Download

Media Runtime: 52

Mastering:

DDD

Catalogue Number: 1493-2

Tracks:

Composition	Artist Credit
Anon in love	William Walton, Composer Craig Ogden, Guitar Martyn Hill, Tenor William Walton, Composer
(A) Song for the Lord Mayor's Table	William Walton, Composer Felicity Lott, Soprano Graham Johnson, Piano William Walton, Composer
Façade, Movement: Through gilded trellises	William Walton, Composer Felicity Lott, Soprano Graham Johnson, Piano William Walton, Composer
Façade, Movement: Fox-trot (Old Sir Faulk)	William Walton, Composer Felicity Lott, Soprano Graham Johnson, Piano William Walton, Composer
Daphne	William Walton, Composer Felicity Lott, Soprano Graham Johnson, Piano William Walton, Composer
Façade, Movement: Long steel grass	William Walton, Composer Graham Johnson, Piano Martyn Hill, Tenor William Walton, Composer
Façade, Movement: Tango-pasodoble	William Walton, Composer Graham Johnson, Piano Martyn Hill, Tenor William Walton, Composer
Façade, Movement: Popular song	William Walton, Composer Graham Johnson, Piano Martyn Hill, Tenor William Walton, Composer
Winds	William Walton, Composer Felicity Lott, Soprano Graham Johnson, Piano William Walton, Composer
Tritons	William Walton, Composer Graham Johnson, Piano Martyn Hill, Tenor William Walton, Composer
Christopher Columbus, Movement: Romanza (Beatriz' song)	William Walton, Composer Felicity Lott, Soprano Graham Johnson, Piano William Walton, Composer
As You Like It	William Walton, Composer Graham Johnson, Piano Martyn Hill, Tenor William Walton, Composer

Author:

Walton was not the most prolific of composers, but he contributed a masterpiece to practically every genre in which he worked. Similarly, while we do not often think of him in association with the song or the song-cycle, his solo cantata A Song for the Lord Mayor’s Table is surely something special. So, you might say, is Anon in love, the sequence of Elizabethan lyrics originally set for tenor and guitar and premiered at Aldeburgh in 1960: I just slightly find that in that original form (as heard here) there is too much of Aldeburgh about it to be thorough-going, essential Walton – which the Lord Mayor’s Table assuredly is. The question of versions is of prime importance where this record is concerned. The immediate impulse is to bring out the corresponding Chandos issue for comparison, especially as Martyn Hill sings Anon on that too. That excellent recital, however, has the songs orchestrally accompanied. Anon in love was rescored for strings, harp and (very sparingly) percussion, the Lord Mayor for full orchestra, which, as Michael Kennedy notes in his introductory essay, Walton really had in mind from the first.
The performances match their accompaniments. Dame Felicity Lott might well have characterized on a larger scale had she been singing, as is Jill Gomez on Chandos, with orchestra. In the songs from Facade, the difference is most marked in “Old Sir Faulk”, where Lott sounds merely pretty and high-spirited by comparison with Gomez’s lightly Americanized flamboyance. In A Song for the Lord Mayor’s Table, “Wapping Old Stairs” points the difference. Here Lott tries a cockney accent, but in the tones of an Eliza Doolittle in reverse; Gomez does it ‘straight’ as far as accent is concerned, but is more cunningly and vividly persuasive in manner.
However “irksome” Walton found the labour, he wrote very well for the piano; so, at least, it seems when Graham Johnson is the pianist. Even Facade sounds pianistic in his hands, and in the second set (arranged by the late Christopher Palmer) the partnership works brilliantly. As a milk-white witness of Spanish night-life, Martyn Hill makes scary magic of “Long steel grass” (but why, I wonder, does he make “the” “thuh” when it so insistently rhymes with “see”, “flee” and “tee-hee”?). The shorter pieces go well too, particularly the 16-year-old’s turbulent accentuations in his setting of Swinburne’s Winds. The recital is a valuable addition to Collins’s English Song series, and those who already have the Chandos disc will find that they are at an advantage: the comparisons are fascinating.'