JAVS Summer 2014

The Journey of a Concerto: The Story of the Walton

by Thomas Tatton The beloved viola concerto of Sir William Walton suffered through some seventy-four years of serpentine twists and turns from its original composition in 1928/29 until 2002, when Christopher Wellington paired the preferred solo part with the orchestration. 1 Much of the confusion was composer inflicted: some was simple miscommunication with a timing difficulty thrown in for good measure. Now this concerto belongs to all of us; it now belongs to the ages. It has achieved communal ownership, and with that comes the shared responsibility to understand its journey and to pass that understanding on to the generations of violists to come. A Snapshot Picture a youthful composer who is shy and unsure, with no marketable instrumental skills. He certainly had little ability at the piano, described as “excruciatingly bad,” among several other disparaging observations. 2 As for his compositional skills, he was basically self taught. 3 This simply does not comport with a commonsensical picture of a “famous” composer. Yet, with all this, he was determined to become a composer. 4 This combination of reticence and less-than-stellar musical skills, but with dogged determination, can, in part, explain much of the complications within the concerto we are about to explore. Even the genesis of the concerto is not without some dispute. The popular notion that Sir

Thomas Beecham suggested the concerto to Walton early in 1928 is quite logical. Beecham and Tertis enjoyed a long and mutually respectful relationship going back to 1909. 5

William Walton in 1928, the year that he began work on the viola concerto

V OLUME 30 S UMMER 2014 O NLINE I SSUE

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