Saturday, November 17, 2012

Walton's Finest: His Viola Concerto

This piece was originally going to be a screed against Sir William Walton, whom I was planning to skewer at length. After gleefully indulging in that pastime for a few hundred words, I realized that it would be much more interesting to try to pinpoint what makes for a hit out of the oeuvre of a respectably good composer. So we come to Walton's Viola Concerto.

This piece is a true masterwork, rightly deserving its place in the Big Three (along with Bartok's strikingly soulful and not-quite-finished concerto and Hindemith's often marvelous and often execrable Der Schwanendreher) which occupy a central place in the practice rooms of high school prodigies and NY Philharmonic aspirants alike. It is a sad thing that, in the concerto programming category, the viola seems consigned in the popular imagination to play third violin to this and that flashy young Mendelssohn- or Tchaikovsky-playing phenom. [Not so in conservatories, where viola concerti get a decent amount of playtime.] This is especially inexplicable for an accessible piece which showcases the strengths of the instrument - its plangent, plaintive alto lyricism and capability for rhythmic propulsion - ably as any good concerto should do.

The first movement starts off in a haze of lower strings which turns out to be the ideal atmosphere from which the viola's theme may emerge. While everything is basically in aeolian minor mode, the shifting harmonies in the orchestra and 9/8 compound triple meter combine to create an almost pleasant disorientation - unlike so many concerti, this one doesn't tip its hand from the opening chords or flourish, somehow very fitting for the persona of the viola (and, often, its players). It also suggests a kinship to another 9/8 opening, that of the Elgar Cello Concerto, written in 1919, only ten years prior to the Walton. While the musical language and effect of the first movement of the Elgar is quite different from that of the Walton, the two are cousins in sadness, the Elgar a study in outright grief, the Walton a more muted melancholy, both filtered through a proper stiff-upper-lip stoicism. Walton himself cited Prokofiev's First Violin Concerto a strong influence, which I hear in terms of the slow-fast-slow larger form and overall flow of the music, but not too much else.

Walton spins out the theme for 32 bars and then introduces a second theme, first in 3/2 and then 7/4, which works across the barline - there is always a sense of pulse but rarely a sense of a definitive downbeat until the 7/4 speeds up into a bit of a tempest in a teapot, as the viola riffs sixteenths over the orchestra's "comped" eighth notes. The effect is quasi-improvisatory but one can always hear a deliberateness to the pitches and line. The agitation whips up the orchestra, which has its own tantrum and then eases back into the recap. at m. 143, where the viola appropriates the orchestral intro. in double stops and then plays filigree above the oboe, which borrows the viola's opening theme - this is a tip of the hat to Prokofiev's similar recap device.

If this opening is infused with a bit of Elgar's nostalgia (though always filtered through Walton's nascent modernism), the second movement is rollicking tale - I always think of a good swashbuckler. Even more so than in the first movement, Walton works across the barline, here often with blatant hemiolas, so that we are constantly up in the air and not sure where or when we might land. He also deploys the orchestra splendidly, sometimes pushing the solo line along, sometimes seeming to argue with it, comment on it, or obstruct it. The brass writing here is consistently fabulous and the winds get in on the fun too. In some ways, Walton outdoes the considerable sense of play and whimsy found in Prokofiev's scherzo. The two orchestral interludes are so entertaining and exhilarating that one almost (but not quite) hates to hear them understandably abbreviated when the piece is performed with piano.

The final third movement, for me the least satisfying, opens with a bassoon solo, an inspired choice given its hippity-hoppity nature, which is then passed off to the viola. The triplets from this theme demand a bit of their own attention, bridging into a second theme, which echoes the language of the first movement but without its consistent lyrical genius. All of these elements converge on an orchestral tour de force which is oft cited in program notes and academic writings but tends to leave me cold; it just seems to be spinning its contrapuntal wheels in a whole lot of sound and fury and not to much effect. This is where Walton's Bauhaus aesthetic of having the music wear its structure proudly and transparently - quite close to that of Paul Hindemith, who premiered the concerto - becomes a liability. Moreover, it seems to me that, at the crucial eleventh hour of the piece, Walton eschews its authenticity, choosing instead to exchange it for ingenious effect. As this dies down, strains of the first movement seep back in to guide the concerto to a more satisfyingly effective rest and conclusion.

To me, the trouble with Walton is that much of his other music is mired in this structural fetish and that, all too often, his melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic creativity have to play servant to it. At its best, it sounds pleasant; at its worst, downright plodding (though maybe never so much as Hindemith at his Teutonic worst). The violin concerto is a good example of this: a piece which has many moments of inspiration but never quite takes flight except for in the hands of a very able soloist, conductor, and orchestra. His other works tend to fall into the categories of wit (the apt writing for Dame Edith Sitwell's Gertrude Stein turn in Façade) or propriety (in many ways, Walton became the heritor of Elgar as England's official composer, writing Crown Imperial and other ceremonial music). Some of his other best music includes his Shakespearian film scores for As You Like It, Henry V, Hamlet, and Richard III - something about the task of underscoring drama seems to have taken him out of his head and much of these scores soars across the silver screen admirably.

But, to be fair, I include this abbreviated version of my screed to reinforce how marvelously lucky we are that Walton rose above his failings to write that great Viola Concerto. Recordings by Yuri Bashmet, Nobuko Imai, and, more recently, Lawrence Power, show the work off to its full advantage. Many more audiences deserve to hear its wonderful mix of lyricism and modernism, live or recorded.