Walton Cello

Despite all the praise heaped on this late work by England's greatest 20th-century composer, it remains a very difficult nut to crack. The best adjective to describe it would have to be "gnarly." The music is dark, dissonant, and only elusively melodic until the transfiguring finale, when sunlight finally bursts through the clouds in the form of a lyrical trumpet tune. It takes real concentration on the listener's part, and although the experience is worth the effort, it's something you have to understand from the beginning. Walton's Concerto is easier on the ear, but also of lighter musical substance. Andrew Lloyd Webber plays both pieces with total conviction and considerable tonal beauty.

For this 2016 Hyperion release, cellist Steven Isserlis and the Philharmonia Orchestra under Paavo Järvi present a moving album of cello concertos by Edward Elgar and William Walton, along with Gustav Holst's Invocation and Imogen Holst's The Fall of the Leaf, a five-movement suite for solo cello. The program creates a profoundly pensive and even autumnal feeling, and Isserlis' tone is by turns reflective, lyrical, and poignantly elegiac, appropriate to the selections. The melancholy nostalgia of Elgar's Cello Concerto in E minor colors the album's mood from the outset, and notwithstanding passages of intense virtuosity, the rich but subdued sonorities of his burnished orchestration contribute to its brooding quality.

With his distinctive blend of incisive drama and lyrical expressiveness, Sir William Walton was one of the greatest English composers of the 20th century. He and his wife Susana made their home on the Italian island of Ischia where he composed the Cello Concerto – a work he considered to be the best of his three concertos for string instruments – heard here for the first time in a stunning transcription for viola by Anna Serova. The Italian composer Roberto Molinelli pays homage to Susana’s Argentine roots and the beautiful garden she created, La Mortella, with his concerto Lady Walton’s Garden, displaying a colourful use of South American and Neapolitan instruments. William’s Rock and The Missing E are also dedicated to La Mortella. This fascinating project marks the 40th anniversary of Sir William Walton’s death, and it presents four world premiere recordings, all composed on and celebrating the island of Ischia and the Walton’s famous Giardini La Mortella, still regarded today as one of the most captivating gardens in the world.

Jamie Walton is joined by the Philharmonia Orchestra under the baton of their conductor laureate Vladimir Ashkenazy for this new concerto recording of concertos and orchestral works by Dvorák and Schumann. Jamie Walton has proved himself as a leading light in UK's musical life; as a performer in his widely praised concerto and sonata recordings, and as a festival director in his work as founder of the North York Moors Festival, which was shortlisted for an RPS Award in 2011.

The Doric gives outstanding, virtuoso performances of William Walton’s two string quartets. The first of them, formidable in its technical demands and harmonic language, is virtually unrecognisable from the Walton of maturity, embracing as it does the avant-garde ideas he flirted with in his youth. Walton said it was “full of undigested Bartók and Schoenberg”, but, when played with such panache, it provides a pungent contrast to the clarity and spry rhythmic sparring of the later A minor Quartet.

Following their successful Dvorák cycle with Signum Records, Albion String Quartet are back with a selection of string quartets by Walton and Shostakovich, recorded in 2021. The concept: to juxtapose two masterpieces written in the same year in the immediate aftermath of war (1946) by composers inhabiting two entirely different social and political worlds in the Soviet Union and Britain respectively. Formed in 2016, the Albion Quartet brings together four of the UK's exceptional young string players who are establishing themselves rapidly on the international stage. Recent engagements from the 2017-18 season included performances at the Louvre in Paris, Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Robert Schumann Gesselschaft in Frankfurt, Båstad Festival in Sweden, Festival of Music in Franconia and Rhine Valley Music Festival in Germany, as well as the Hay Festival in the UK. The members of the quartet play on a fine collection of instruments, including a Stradivarius and Guarnerius.