Violin Concerto

Writing a concerto for Jascha Heifetz was a daunting challenge. The violinist, who had offered Walton the commission on a visit to London in 1936, was than at the height of his powers and famed as one of the greatest musicians of his generation. Reluctantly turning down a lucrative film contract, the composer accepted and, not without misgivings, started on the concerto early in 1938 when he was staying in Viscountess Wimbourne’s Villa Cambrone, spectacularly situated above Ravello on the Amalfi Coast. The Italian setting and the presence of Alice Wimbourne were both significant factors in the creation of a work which owes at least its initial inspiration to the composer’s love for a “marvellous woman” with “all the virtues.” She was 22 years his senior but, he said, “very beautiful, intelligent, kind, very rich, a grand hostess, very musical.”   

The first movement is so amorously lyrical, in fact, that Walton feared that the work was “developing in an extremely intimate way” with “not much show and bravura.” Although by the time the concerto was complete there would be no shortage of such qualities, the Andante tranquillo is far more more inclined    to offer the soloist an expressively shapely line than an opportunity for a display of technical wizardry. At its heart and nearly always present in one form or another is the lovely, rhythmically supple melody introduced by the solo violin over a like-minded bassoon counterpoint in the opening bars.

If the opening theme seems a little reminiscent of Gershwin’s “Summertime” it is no less personal for that: Walton’s lingering fondness for his sognando (dreaming) melody is essentially, as he said, “intimate.” As though to effect the necessary change of subject without disturbing the dream, flutes and violins presents a second main theme which – in spite of a rather quicker tempo and an extreme change of key from B minor to E flat minor – is not very different in mood from the first. Before the solo violin adopts the new idea, it briefly attempts to rouse itself into activity. But it is the orchestra which decides it is time for a decisive change of tempo and so bustles the soloist into ever quicker and ever more energetic display of bravura, culminating in a cadenza. In general, however, as the development continues, the violin retains its characteristic attachment to lyrical melody and, indeed, it persuades the orchestra, represented by flutes and violins again, to recall the main theme in the original key of B minor. Although at this point the violin contents itself with the counterpoint originally awarded to bassoon, it is not long before it expands once again on the main theme, now encouraged by exotically sensuous comments from woodwind. The second subject is discreetly recalled on lower strings and woodwind before the soloist dreams an ecstatic ending.

One of the less pleasant aspects of the composer’s Italian experience was being bitten by a tarantula – which, no doubt, inspired the tarantella-like material in the second movement, a scherzo put firmly in its geographical place by its Presto capriccioso alla napolitana heading. It begins with a characteristically explosive burst of energy from the orchestra and a flight of triplets from the soloist, who runs into a particularly tricky patch of rapidly alternating pizzicato and harmonics before relaxing into a Neapolitan-style song voluptuosly harmonised in double-stopped sixths. The central Canzonetta features another song, this one introduced by a solo horn and only later taken up by the violin, high on the E-string.

If there was not yet enough “show and bravura” in the work even Heifetz could surely not have been disappointed by the scoring of the last movement. But here too, after the quiet but busy introduction on lower strings and wind, a gruffly multi-stopped version of the same Prokofiev-like theme on the violin, and still more animated material from the orchestra, the soloist is encouraged to indulge in another expression of intimate lyricism – an episode which is to be given even more romantic treatment in the middle of the construction. The main objective, however, as becomes increasingly clear from melodic hints dropped in the quiet passages between the bursts of orchestral hyper-activity and solo virtuosity, is to recall the opening theme of the first movement. The responsibility for that falls, of course, to the soloist who enchantingly recalls the still ecstatic melody in double-stopped sixths at the beginning of an inspired episode incorporating an extended cadenza – which is accompanied at one point by tremolando strings, much as in Elgar’s Violin Concerto in the same key of B minor. A quick-march version of the main theme of the movement and a robust coda bring the work to an emphatic end.