Carl Davis Conducts Walton

Carl Davis and William Walton

Here is a tribute to the late composer-conductor Carl Davis in the form of his 1986 LP devoted to the music of William Walton. Davis is known primarily for his film music and Walton for his concert works, but each were active in both realms. In his LP, Davis concentrated on Walton's scores for the screen, with the addition of one brief interlude from an opera.

The disc opens with Walton's music for the 1944 film Henry V, in a suite compiled by Malcolm Sargent. This contains some of Walton's best known film music - the beautiful passacaglia "Death of Falstaff" and the exquisite "Touch her sweet lips and part" - along with the less familiar title music.

Laurence Olivier as Henry V

Next, Davis resurrected the music that Walton wrote for the 1969 film The Battle of Britain, most of which was not used. It was unheard until the composer Colin Matthews prepared a suite from the score, containing one of Walton's typically Elgarian marches. In his Gramophone review, Edward Greenfield commented, "The big melody itself is first cousin to the one in 'Orb and Sceptre' (as indeed is the one in the English Speaking Peoples March) but after its first repetition a trio section is provided by using the music Walton wrote to represent the German pilots. Partly as a dig at Wagner - a composer Walton did not enjoy - he took Siegfried’s horn theme and turned it into a tripping, elegant waltz, almost French in style. It provides an unexpected but delightful contrast before the big tune returns in full grandeur."

The sole work on the LP not from a film is the Act II Interlude from Walton's opera Troilus and Cressida. As Greenfield commented, it is "almost as explicit in its musical representation of love-making as the Prelude to Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier."

The album also includes the first recording of music from Paul Czinner's 1936 adaptation of As You Like It. The music is not dissimilar to Walton's later film music, while showing some obvious influences. The "Waterfall Scene" sounds like Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe crossed with Ferde Grofé. As with Henry V and The Battle of Britain, Laurence Olivier was the lead in the film.

The final selection on the LP is a March from A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, a television series based on Churchill's book. It too was not used, although the music is delightful. In his sleeve notes, Christopher Palmer says it is more reminiscent of Eric Coates than Elgar, but it is easy to detect the influence of Walton's Elgarian "Orb and Sceptre" March.

Carl Davis in the studio

The early digital sound on the LP, recorded at Abbey Road, is quite good, and the performances by the London Philharmonic are excellent. The 1986 recording was issued on CD as well as LP, but my transfer is from the latter. The cover of my LP was damaged, so there is some patching involved on the back cover to make it readable. The download includes several reviews.

Carl Davis (1936-2023) was an American-born British composer who wrote scores for a huge number of television programs and films, e.g., Pride and Prejudice for TV and The French Lieutenant's Woman for the big screen. He also wrote much concert music, including several ballet scores.

Gramophone, July 1987

English Songs from Wilfred Brown

The English tenor Wilfred Brown (1921-71) is best known for his recording of Gerald Finzi's "Dies Natalis," which I have cited here before as one of my favorite records.

To my knowledge, Brown did not make other records of similar repertoire. That's why I was so excited to learn of this rare recording, uploaded to another site by my friend David (aka "dances"). It presents Brown in a recital of songs by 20th century English composers, and it is a treasure to those who, like me, love this material.

David, a reader of this site, graciously offered to let me present the record here. I am very grateful for the opportunity.

Wilfred Brown

As noted, Brown is best known for his recording of "Dies Natalis"; he was a friend and associate of the composer, who appears here with three of his settings of Thomas Hardy. Brown was a member of the Deller Consort for some years. He also appeared on recordings of Handel, Purcell, Bach and Haydn, one duo recital with guitarist John Williams and a few other LPs for small labels.

This recital was made for the Jupiter label in 1962. That imprint was apparently started by the business executive T. Wallace Southam, a part-time composer who is represented by two songs on the compilation. One, a setting of "Nemea" by Southam's friend Lawrence Durrell, is quite good.

Beside Finzi and Southam, the other composers represented are Peter Warlock, George Butterworth, W. Denis Browne, Lennox Berkeley, Ivor Gurney and William Walton. Browne, like George Butterworth, perished in World War I. His setting of Richard Lovelace's "To Gratiana singing and dancing" is a high point of the program.

Several of the songs represented have appeared on this blog in other performances. Warlock's "Sleep" can also be found in the Warlock collection from Alexander Young. Butterworth's "Loveliest of Trees," the first song in his first group of Housman settings, "Six Songs from A Shropshire Lad," has appeared here before in the recording by Roy Henderson.

The Walton works comprise his "Three Songs" of 1932. In that group, Walton reset some of the many Façade pieces he composed with Edith Sitwell. These are sung, rather than recited versions that make an interesting contrast to the earlier items, two of which have appeared here before. "Through Gilded Trellises" is contained in the Sitwell-Prausnitz recording of 1949. "Old Sir Faulk" can be heard in the 1929 recording by Constant Lambert and Walton, as well as in a 1950 instrumental version conducted by Lambert, both available via this post.

Accompanying Brown is the excellent Margaret McNamee, who apparently was the singer's regular pianist.

Included in the download are texts of all songs and translations of the two Berkeley items, compiled from web sources, along with a front cover cleaned up from a web source. Good mono sound; David says there doesn't appear to have been a stereo version.

Thanks once again to David for allowing me to make this available here!

Edith Sitwell's 1949 Façade

The other day I was listening to some early-30s radio recordings of George Gershwin performing his own music, and was struck by how different his rendition of the first piano Prelude was from the version done by his follower Oscar Levant in the 1940s. Levant makes the piece sound like an Americanized Satie, while Gershwin shows it to be from the ragtime tradition.

I'm probably not alone in preferring Levant's evocative playing to Gershwin's brisk run-through - even though there is something that tells me I should prefer the composer in his own work.

This, too, is the case with William Walton's settings of Edith Sitwell's poetry. Do I have to like Walton's own 1929 recording of Façade, with Sitwell and Constant Lambert as reciters, recently presented here? Or can I admit to a strong predilection for this 1949 outing by Sitwell and a chamber orchestra led by the young Frederik (here spelled Frederick) Prausnitz?

In truth, I also prefer Dame Edith's recitation on this 10-inch LP to her efforts 20 years before. While she does not have the breath control of her younger self, she seems more engaged with Prausnitz's flexible reading of the score.

1948 Horst P. Horst portrait of Edith Sitwell

Then again, this is not to say that Walton would approve. Reader JAC, who knows the piece intimately from having performed it several times, commented on the 1929 version: "Study of the score reveals that Dame Edith never mastered the specific rhythms that Walton wrote, particularly the syncopations; sometimes she wasn't even in the right measure."

Columbia's 1949 recording was designed to be a 25th anniversary edition of Façade's first public performance. The cover notes by Osbert Sitwell describe its genesis and the scandal that attended that premiere. Columbia's Goddard Lieberson indulges in some hyperbole about Sitwell, and the whole thing is presented as being produced "in cooperation with the Museum of Modern Art," although it's not clear what's MOMA contribution had been. The very good recording comes from Columbia's 30th Street Studio.

Columbia engaged the wonderful Jim Flora for its cover. His idiosyncratic drawings are well in tune with the spirit of the proceedings, with his letter forms a particular delight.

Frederik Prausnitz

A final note: this may have been conductor Prausnitz's first record session. He went on to be typed, at least in the recording studio, as a 20th-century specialist. His next record, also for Columbia, was of Carl Ruggles, in 1954. He went on to conduct scores by Wolpe, Sessions, Schoenberg, Riegger, Musgrave, Gerhard, Dallapiccola, Carter and Busoni for Columbia, EMI and Argo.

Lambert's Façade, Sargent's Wand of Youth

Tonight, two versions of Walton's Façade music from Constant Lambert, plus music of Elgar conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent.

Side one of the LP above contains the two Façade instrumental suites for orchestra, as devised by the composer in 1926 and 1938. (Lambert intermixes the numbers of the two suites.) The second side has the first of two Wand of Youth suites that Elgar devised from his earliest compositions.

Walton by Michael Ayrton

Façade has a complex performance history. Originally devised as a family entertainment by poet Edith Sitwell, her brothers and their friend William Walton, its first public performance came in 1923. The audience saw only a curtain painted with a head. Sitwell and the instrumentalists were backstage, with the poet declaiming her words through a megaphone poking out of the mouth, to the tune of Walton's sophisticated musical parodies. This upper-class leg-pulling created a succès de scandale in certain circles, making enough of a stir that it became a mini-industry in itself, with Sitwell producing additional poems and Walton composing more music. Eventually there were ballet versions as well, and Walton was adding new pieces as late as the 1970s.

Lambert by Christopher Wood

Constant Lambert was closely associated with Façade. He appears to have been the first reciter other than Sitwell herself to present the work, on the occasion of its second performance in 1926. In 1929, he and Sitwell were the speakers in a Decca recording conducted by Walton. I have transferred that version from an LP dub in my collection and added it to the download as a bonus. Lambert was a remarkably facile reciter, who was well matched with Sitwell.

Lambert returned to the recording studios with Façade in 1950, this time as conductor of the  orchestral suites found on the LP above. These give a good impression of Walton's musical achievement, with characteristically fine performances from the vintage Philharmonia.

Sargent by Gerald Festus Kelly

Elgar's Wand of Youth suite could hardly be more different from the Walton-Sitwell "entertainment,"
although it was composed within 15 years of Façade. The Edwardians had a tendency to romanticize youth; several of Elgar's works display this characteristic. (See my post from several years ago discussing The Starlight Express, for an example.) Even so, it would be hard to dispute the charm, warmth and appeal of Elgar's heartfelt music.

Elgar himself conducted both suites for a 1928 recording. I believe the first suite's next appearance on record was in 1949, in a version directed by Eduard van Beinum. The Sargent effort with the Liverpool Philharmonic came only a few months later. Liverpool did not have a top-flight orchestra at the time, but they are in better fettle here than they were a few years earlier in the Horoscope recordings I recently featured.

Edith Sitwell with her brother (Osbert, I believe) in 1922

Sargent Conducts Holst; Walton Conducts Walton

Last night, after Britain voted to leave the European Union, reader Andrew wrote, "Buster, a few years ago, after it took the UK nearly a week to decide choose a Government, you found some Vaughan Williams to calm us down. We've just taken a day to leave the EU and we need it even more. Anything appropriate?"

Well, this music by Gustav Holst may not be soothing, but may be suitable for the situation. It is the ballet music from his opera The Perfect Fool, as performed by the London Philharmonic under Malcolm Sargent, in a Kingsway Hall session from March 1946. The transfer is from the original 78 set, with a fourth-side fill-up of Victor de Sabata's "Ride of the Valkyries," a left-over from his 1946 LPO dates.

At the same time, let me add a few noble and peaceful works (and one rowdier one) from another great British composer, Sir William Walton. These come from a 10-inch LP issued in celebration of Queen Elizabeth's coronation. They comprise the "Orb and Sceptre" coronation march written for Elizabeth, the "Crown Imperial" march from George VI's 1937 ceremony, the "Portsmouth Point" overture, and the arrangement of Bach's "Sheep May Safely Graze" done for Walton's "The Wise Virgins" ballet. The composer conducted the Philharmonia Orchestra in March 1953 Kingsway Hall sessions.

The sound on all these items is good.