William Walton : Viola Concertos
Genre: Classical
Catalogue Number: CDA67587
Label: Unknown
Released: March 2007
The disc brings together three major pieces by two outstanding and highly individual English composers. Walton's Viola Concerto is one of his greatest works-haunted throughout by the dreamy opening melody, yet suffused with action and vigour, exhibiting the dazzling, biting brilliance familiar from works such as Façade. The 'eloquent epilogue', wrote Walton's biographer Michael Kennedy, 'remains the single most beautiful passage in all his music, sensuous yet full of uncertainty'. It is presented here in the original 1928 version in its first modern recording.
Rubbra's Viola Concerto is also one of its composer's major works, demonstrating the new musical depths he had sounded with his Sixth Symphony and showing influences of the symphonic traditions of Tchaikovsky and Sibelius.
Alongside it we have the first recording of Rubbra's Meditations on a Byzantine Hymn for solo viola, an extended virtuoso work of religious and solemn aspect.
Tracklist
- Viola Concerto Original Version
- Meditations On A Byzantine Hymn For Solo Viola Op 117
- Viola Concerto In A Major Op 75
View directory entry for William Walton
