William Walton - Film Music Vol. 4 (Neville Marriner)

Information

Composer: William Walton

• Richard III, A Shakespeare Scenario
• Macbeth: Fanfare and March
• Major Barbara - A Shavian Sequence for Orchestra

John Gielgud, speaker

Academy of St. Martin in the Fields

Neville Marriner, conductor

Date: 1991

Label: Chandos

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Review

The British composer William Walton began writing film scores in the early Thirties with music for Escape Me Never (1934). The music often outshone the movie and certainly ran steps beyond most of the British and Hollywood work of the time. However, Walton, while certainly capable, didn't achieve his present status as one of the greatest film composers of all until his collaboration with Lawrence Olivier on three Shakespeare films: Henry V (1944), Hamlet (1948), and Richard III (1955). By that time, Walton had learned several lessons – as had just about every other film composer – from the example of Prokofiev's Alexander Nevsky (1938), including how to give essentially snippets of music symphonic weight and movement. The Henry V score alone forced a major reassessment of Walton's previous film efforts.

Other than excerpts, usually confined to three or four arrangements by Muir Mathieson, this music has to my dismay and shock been unavailable for many years. Chandos, perhaps as part of its Walton Edition, has begun to make up for the long absence by releasing the Shakespearian scores, along with other Walton film music. The late Christopher Palmer, a film fanatic and fortunately a superb musician, arranged Walton's cues into coherent movements, although he admits that Walton's practice in Richard had been to write in long paragraphs, so the job became relatively easy. We get, probably for the first time outside of seeing the movie itself, almost everything in Walton's cues, rather than the drastically-reduced, though highly effective suites made by Mathieson.

Richard III represents Walton at his best – a revving Rolls-Royce engine of invention and drama. The tunes are unbelievably good, and of course Walton's craftsmanship provides elegantly perfect settings for these jewels. I admire Walton's other work, but I really love these – the creation of a mock-Tudor style that owes nothing to either Edward German or Vaughan Williams, the glitter of the orchestra, and of course the themes that hug you.

The Macbeth pastiche comes from incidental music for a Gielgud 1941 production of the play. The musical material comes mainly from the banqueting scenes and "March of the Eight Kings." By throwing in a cartload of double reeds, Walton gets the effect of bagpipes. As Palmer remarks in his liner notes, "the more flutes and piccolos and oboes and cors anglais available, the better."

Also from 1941, the composer's score to the Shaw-Pascal film Major Barbara rambles through familiar Old Waltonian grounds. Cheeky, subtly satirical (the opening credits transform "Onward, Christian Soldiers" into a not-quite pompous fanfare and march), it bubbles with good humor, and it boasts a chameleon love theme that expresses everything from light courtship to Tristan-like passion. My favorite section of the score, Adolphus's visit to Undershaft's factory, bangs and clatters with drums, hammers, and anvils while remaining purposeful and cleanly orchestrated.

I'm used to the old Walton EMI recordings of the Shakespeare suites, so Marriner came as a bit of a surprise, particularly his tempos. Walton I'd call an "efficient" conductor, one who lets the music pretty much stand on its own. Marriner is more thoughtful and deliberate. Early on, I had the queasy feeling that he adopted a slower-than-what-I've-heard beat just to gin up Significance, the last thing this music needs. However, I always found a very musical (and effective) reason for his deviations from what I expected. I will say, however, that Chandos's engineering seemed to me less clear, though more natural, than the EMI recording. You say "potato." It's not enough to keep anybody away from this magnificent work.

— Steve Schwartz

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William Walton (29 March 1902 – 8 March 1983) was an English composer. During a sixty-year career, he wrote music in several classical genres and styles, from film scores to opera. His best-known works include Façade, the cantata Belshazzar's Feast, the Viola Concerto, the First Symphony, and the British coronation marches Crown Imperial and Orb and Sceptre. Walton was a slow worker, painstakingly perfectionist, and his complete body of work is not large. His most popular compositions continue to be frequently performed in the 21st century, and by 2010 almost all his works had been released on CD.

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Neville Marriner (1924–2016) was an English violinist and conductor. Trained at the Royal College of Music and the Paris Conservatory, he performed with leading ensembles such as the Philharmonia and London Symphony before turning fully to conducting. Marriner was renowned for his extensive recording career and leadership of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, which he founded in 1958 and directed for more than five decades. He also led major international orchestras in Los Angeles, Minnesota and Stuttgart. He earned three Grammy Awards, notably for supervising the Amadeus (1984) soundtrack.

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