Sonata for string orchestra

There are few string quartets that sound good on string orchestra. Having agreed that his String Quartet in A minor could be arranged as a Sonata for string orchestra for Neville Marriner and the Academy of St-Martin-in-the-Fields, Walton was so unsure about it that he tried to get Malcolm Arnold to do it for him. He was not only reluctant to shorten the first movement, as Marriner had requested, but also uncertain about the effect that a larger ensemble (with double bass) would have on music originally written for four solo strings. In the end, although Arnold apparently helped him with the last movement, Walton did own “dirty work,” as he called it, and duly produced one of the most effective arrangements of its kind. It was first performed by Marriner and the Academy at the Perth Festival in Western Australia in March 1972 and at the Bath Festival two months later.

The first movement must have given him more trouble than most. Apart from the problem of cutting and compressing a piece that had been troublesome enough a quarter of a century earlier - and he did succeed in shortening it by thirty bars or so - there was the danger that the intricate scoring of the original would make little sense in translation. The opening Allegro is an essentially contrapuntal conception. That much is clear from the very first entry of violas and second violins, with the main theme and a counter-theme, and the subsequent four-part extension of the first subject. The second subject, a characteristic display of muscular rhythms and athletic energy, is far less complicated, it is true. But the development, which features a brilliant fugato on a variant of the first main theme, is most intricately worked in texture. The poetic recall of the first subject at the end of the movement, with the rhythm of the second subject still buzzing in the bass, is another delicate balance.

Apart from the excision of one bar, the Presto scherzo is just the same in the orchestral version as it is in the original. Bearing in mind the robust quality of the outer sections, which are largely a matter of dynamic emphasis and rhythmic impulse, and the sparse scoring of the middle section, which projects supple melodic lines against an ostinato background, Walton could be sure that it would work as well either way. The Lento he might have hoped would be even better in the orchestral version. While it is a personal inspiration often expressed in intimate terms, as in the viola melody at the beginning of the movement and another one later on, there is a new textural dimension in this case, the spontaneous utterances of solo voices standing in relief from the orchestral background.

The Allegro molto finale is a rondo based on material which, like that of the Presto scherzo, is orchestral even in the original. The test of the transcription is in the central episode, where a shapely melodic line is drawn across gently sustained rhythmic activity in the other parts to seal the thematic unity of the work. The coda, particularly the upward surging bass line at one point, seems to call for nothing less than orchestral forces.