Overview
Introduction
The Violin Concerto of William Walton was written in 1938–39 and dedicated to Jascha Heifetz, who premiered it on December 7, 1939. in Cleveland. Walton later reorchestrated his violin concerto in 1943.
History
The concerto was written for the American virtuoso Jascha Heifetz, who commissioned the writing of a violin concerto in 1936, on which Walton started to work since January 1938. To the commission of Heifetz joined the commission of British Council in 1939, the composing a concerto for violin to present at the 1939 World's Fair in New York. However in a letter to Artur Bliss of the 28 April 1938 Walton mentioned, that the new composition seems to be developing an extremely intimate way, not much show, bravura, so he had begun to have doubts of the small voice getting over a vast hall holding ten thousand of people.
So the premiere of the original version took place in Severance Hall, Cleveland on December 7, 1939, with Heifetz on violin and the Cleveland Orchestra conducted by Artur Rodziński. Heifetz made the first recording of the piece, with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra conducted by Eugene Goossens, in 1942. The revised version premiered on January 17, 1944, in Wolverhampton, England, with Henry Holst on violin and the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Malcolm Sargent. The revised version has been recorded by such violinists as Sir Yehudi Menuhin, Zino Francescatti, Nigel Kennedy, Tasmin Little and Joshua Bell.
Musical structure
The violin concerto has three movements:
- Andante tranquillo
- Presto capriccioso alla napolitana
- Vivace
The concerto, about a half-hour in length, is scored for violin solo and standard orchestra (the revision pared down the percussion section from the original). Like the Viola Concerto (1929), with which, along with Façade (1921–22), the composer had made his name, the work follows a pattern of lyrical opening—scherzo—sonata-form finale.
Among the works written by Walton around the same time are the march Crown Imperial and In Honour of the City of London for double chorus and orchestra (both 1937) and the Second Orchestral Suite from Façade (1938). The violin concertos of Samuel Barber, Ernest Bloch, Benjamin Britten, Karl Amadeus Hartmann, Paul Hindemith, and Walter Piston are contemporary, and Berg's, Schoenberg's, Sessions's, Bartók's second, and Prokofiev's second violin concertos were completed within the three years preceding the start of Walton's composition.
