No composer has followed on the Elgar ceremonial tradition with such brilliance and panache as Walton. Here with many items never on record before we have a heartwarming celebration of that side of his work. All credit to Carl Davis not just for digging out long-buried film material, but for proving such a red-blooded interpreter of music that—like Elgar—has to be played for all it is worth.
One of my cherished memories is of meeting Walton for the first time out at Denham studios, where we saw Malcolm Arnold conducting the music Walton had written for the film, The Battle of Britain. It was not so much the ''Battle in the Air'' music that delighted me, jaggedly brilliant as it is, but the march written for the triumphant conclusion. In the end, after much wrangling, the film company used only the battle music, and went to Ron Goodwin for a score that would fill out a whole LP, but I have always been sad that the march got buried. Much more recently Edward Heath purchased the score from the film company to present to Walton himself, and now with Colin Matthews doing some expert work on the orchestration Davis has put together a short suite. The battle music is prefaced by a brief Spitfire fanfare, very characteristic of Walton, but after that the march comes over in a grand concert form that the composer, I am sure, would have approved warmly. The big melody itself is first cousin to the one in Orb and Sceptre (as indeed is the one in the English Speaking Peoples March) but after its first repetition a trio section is provided by using the music Walton wrote to represent the German pilots. Partly as a dig at Wagner—a composer Walton did not enjoy—he took Siegfried's horn theme and turned it into a tripping, elegant waltz, almost French in style. It provides an unexpected but delightful contrast before the big tune returns in full grandeur on unison horns, aptly over-the-top. I remember at the time of the first dispute over the film suggesting to Sir Colin Davis that the march would make an ideal end-of-Proms item, but as originally written it was too short. Now there is no excuse.
The English Speaking Peoples March, written for the television series on Sir Winston Churchill's history, and again never used, is similarly end-of-Proms material. The formula may be the same as in the Coronation marches, with syncopated fanfare music contrasted against a grand patriotic melody, but with Walton it always works. The Henry V suite also includes music not heard since the original film score, for Davis has resurrected the choral passages of the opening music for the credits—a rising crescendo passage with hints of Vaughan Williams, which in the film accompanied the panorama of Elizabethan London and then after the first statement of the Globe music a jolly little chorus for women's voices. At the end the Agincourt song also has the chorus parts restored. I am only sorry that the magnificent Charge and Battle music, normally included in the suite, is here left out. In the two little string pieces Davis is heavier-handed in his warmth than Previn on his recent recording with the Royal Philharmonic (RPO RPO8001; CD CDRPO8001, 6/86).
The Troilus and and Cressida Interlude—almost as explicit in its musical representation of love-making as the Prelude to Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier—shows Walton in opera learning from his film experience, but the new discovery that in some ways is the most exciting of all is the music Walton wrote in 1936 for Paul Czinner's film of As you like it. This is close in style to the later film music, but it has just as close a kinship to the First Symphony in its extra bite and use of such devices as pedal points.
Walton, writing against the clock, had no inhibitions about cribbing devices from Respighi's The Pines of Rome (as in the Fountain scene) or from Ravel's Daphnis et Chloe (as in the Waterfall scene) ending with a tantalizingly brief but aptly placed Hymn for chorus. I only hope that more Walton film scores—like that for the wartime film, Went the day well—can now similarly be turned into very effective concert suites. The recording was sponsored by the LPO and was made with an EMI balance engineer at the Abbey Road Studios. It fully lives up to the standards of opulence one associates with EMI issues of Walton'