Introduction

I am really excited to be presenting to you a programme of two beloved English composers in this concert: Elgar and Walton.

I love both Walton’s Second Symphony and Orb & Sceptre. Walton’s music shares the traditional classical values of Elgar’s but written towards the latter end of the twentieth century, I think his music shares many similarities to the film music we know today, especially in his second symphony.

We can also feel the many great English colours of Walton’s writing, particularly in the Orb & Sceptre – a piece written for Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation. Although short, it is very impactful and fanfare-like, every note composed with meaning and as a whole feels as though it deeply honours his country. Walton lived in Italy for most of his career and often said he found composing with an English style easier whilst living out of the country, which I can relate to as I also find expressing and connecting to the Japanese elements in my conducting easier in Europe.

It will be my first time conducting Elgar’s Violin Concerto and as Elgar’s only concerto written for the violin, it is a very meaningful yet difficult piece to play and conduct! I know it will be a big challenge for me but to perform it alongside Eugene, I know I will feel at ease. I have a very special relationship with him, and he encourages such warmth and harmony across the orchestra as leader.

I really hope you enjoy this performance, and it brings you even more joy as we approach halfway through our 2024-25 season.

Kazuki Yamada
Music Director

Programme Notes

Any suggestion that British music has a ‘stiff upper lip’ would be rebuffed by these glowing, expressive works. The passionate Elgar Concerto was given the mysterious inscription "Herein is enshrined the soul of .....". The CBSO’s leader Eugene Tzikindelean inhabits the enigmatic ‘soul’ of the piece in the soloist role. Walton’s Orb & Sceptre is suitably ceremonial, while his Symphony No.2 has been described as an "emotional blockbuster".

Violin Concerto

Edward Elgar (1857-1934)

I. Allegro
II. Andante
III. Allegro molto

Elgar’s Violin Concerto was completed in 1910 and, although the composer lived for a further twenty-four years, it was one of his last big successes. The famous cello concerto, written a few years later, was – surprising as it seems today - a flop at its premiere. By contrast the concerto for violin was rapturously received and has generally remained in the repertoire ever since. It is, though, known for being one of the longest and most demanding of concertos, with the solo part constituting a forensic examination of the violin’s physical capabilities. This is partly due it being Elgar’s own instrument, partly to the talents of Fritz Kreisler – who had put it about that he longed for Elgar to write a concerto for him - and partly to advice from WH ‘Billy’ Reed, the leader of the London Symphony Orchestra who consulted nearly throughout the composition process.

Michael Kennedy once remarked that the concerto is a ‘wayward’ work. This is perhaps especially so in the first movement with its constant changes of tempo and dynamic markings, suggesting a very personal train of thought. The personal element of the concerto has been much discussed due to the enigmatic inscription Elgar originally in Spanish: ‘”Herein is enshrined the soul of…..”’, with five dots instead of a name (the quotation, originally in Spanish, is from a novel called Gil Blas by Alain René-Lesage). Elgar scholars generally agree that the dots represent Elgar’s close friend Alice Stuart-Wortley, daughter of the painter Millais, whom he nicknamed ‘Windflower’: several of the themes in the concerto are given the name ‘Windflower’. But in not confirming either way, Elgar clearly enjoyed creating yet another musical ‘Enigma’.

The Concerto has a passionate, sustained intensity. The first movement overflows with themes – almost a mini-concerto on its own - and has an ardent central section. The second movement, a touching Andante, is less dramatic but equally as lyrical, and something of a ‘breather’ before the startling third. While concerto finales are often more of a romp, with the emotional heavy-lifting – and solo cadenza - confined to the first movement, in Elgar’s the soloist has to brace him or herself for the most demanding music yet. The cadenza is even more unconventional, not heralded by the usual drumroll and a down-tools from the orchestra, but accompanied nearly throughout, often by an unusual ‘thrumming’ effect in the strings. It harks back to themes from the first movement, the soloist working them through against this mysterious, even eerie backdrop.

‘How excited he was about the Cadenza’ wrote Billy Reed. And the critics were excited by the whole piece, heaping praise onto it after the premiere, performed by Kreisler and conducted by Elgar. He was rightly proud of the work, which has the capacity to surprise those who believe the composer was a stiff-upper-lipped Edwardian, hiding his feelings behind tweed suit and bushy moustache. As he wrote during its composition: ‘I have the Concerto well in hand…& it’s good! Awfully emotional! Too emotional but I love it’.

Orb & Sceptre

William Walton (1902-1983)

Walton composed his Orb & Sceptre march for the Coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953. It appeared towards the end of an impressively long and varied list of works which were played before the service, and was one of two first performances (the other being Arthur Bliss’s Processional). The composer had form with such ceremonies, having been commissioned to write a piece for the Coronation of the Queen’s father, George VI, in 1936. The result was his Crown Imperial march, and both this and Orb & Sceptre take their titles from a speech in Shakespeare’s Henry V, in which the King lays out the burdens of his role:

“‘Tis not the balm, the sceptre and the ball,

The sword, the mace, the crown imperial,

… Not all these, laid in bed majestical,

Can sleep so soundly as the wretched slave”

Changing ‘ball’ to the more poetic ‘orb’ in his title (he once joked that he was keeping ‘Bed Majestical’ as a potential title for the Coronation of Charles III), Walton creates a suitably ceremonial march, strong on trumpets and percussion, and full of his trademark rhythmic spice. It opens emphatically with a fanfare, before launching briskly into the first theme. The march as a whole has a tremendous sense of anticipation, almost giddy at times. Yet Walton intercuts the festive mood with a noble-sounding melody, which has a similar quality to the stirring central passage of Crown Imperial. In this later march, however, the irrepressible high spirits dominate even the ‘noble’ melody at its second appearance, and it closes with a glittering display across the whole orchestra.

Symphony no.2

William Walton (1902-1983)

I. Allegro molto
II. Lento assai
III. Passacaglia

Walton’s second symphony was premiered in September 1960, some twenty-five years after his only other symphony. The first was hard-won, Walton having suffered a prolonged period of ‘composer’s block,’ and sailing past several deadlines. The second had similar problems, taking three years to complete, and overshooting the event for which it was commissioned (the 750th anniversary of the granting to Liverpool the charter of incorporation, which landed in 1957). Walton, who by early 1959 had only completed the first movement, confessed that he was suffering from ‘nightmares of irate mayors and corporations.’ It was finally premiered at the 1960 Edinburgh Festival by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra.

It is a relatively short work, less than half an hour in most performances, tightly constructed, and less turbulent than the fiery first. The first movement begins with a fluttering, anxious motif in the woodwind and strings and distinctive cameos from the celeste and piano. The movement gathers in momentum, its rhythms and rising motifs becoming increasingly assertive, even punchy. Some of the later passages strongly resemble the jazz-infused energy of Bernstein’s West Side Story, which was composed around the same time. In its darker moments – notably towards the end - there seem to be echoes of Stravinsky’s pounding savagery in the Rite of Spring.

The second movement, by contrast, is sensuous and shimmering. It opens with a serene woodwind chorale and muted strings, out of which emerge a group of soulful melodies. The huge forces required for the symphony are put to delicate use in the opening minutes, with brief solo spots against backdrops of small, subtly orchestrated groupings. Walton allows the orchestra to surge in the central section with some full-blooded themes; yet the ‘shimmer’ returns in the enigmatic final passage, enhanced by a well-placed contribution from the vibraphone. In the finale, Walton introduces an emphatic 12-note theme, around which he creates a series of ten variations ranging from agitated to playful to jazzy, followed by an elaborate and increasingly nerve-jangling fugue. By the time the motif is played at the conclusion it has taken on a more sparkling and triumphant quality.

The symphony took something of a mauling in the musical press after its premiere, with reviewers somehow criticising both its lack of modernity (for a piece written in 1960) and its failure to resemble his first symphony (written in 1935). David Lloyd-Jones in the Musical Times lamented the sentimental, ‘Elgarian purple’ of the slow movement, suggesting the composer’s style had ‘lost its bloom and savour’. The symphony became considerably more popular in the USA, championed by the conductor George Szell. to whom Walton later dedicated the work. Today, the symphony is considered one of Walton’s best. With the distance of a few decades it is possible to appreciate both the hallmarks of Walton’s idiom, and the powerful way in which he has framed them in a distinctive and even bracingly modern context.

© Lucy Walker 2024