Martin Yates reviews

The Walton Violin Concerto almost always heard today is not the original 1939 score, but its later revision. Marooned in England by the Second World War, Walton had to miss the work’s first performance by Jascha Heifetz in America. After himself conducting the British premiere, he re-worked the orchestration, in places substantially, while leaving the solo part unchanged. While Heifetz recorded the first version in 1941, Dutton’s release has the advantage of modern sound. Is this original version ‘better’? It depends on your preference.

In 1895, The Musical Times in reviewing this Concertstück played by the composer heard influences of Wagner, Liszt and Grieg; Lewis Foreman in the liner notes to this disc adds Dvořák and Saint-Saëns. Take your pick! 

One of my music teachers loftily pronounced that the Sinfonia Antarticawas not a real symphony, but merely film music. He would surely have been silenced by what conductor Martin Yates has uncovered here – essentially a huge forgotten work on, as the notes put it, ‘a quasi-symphonic canvas’, which Vaughan Williams composed in full before even a frame of the film itself was shot – apparently in a fervent three weeks.