Sir William Walton OM (1902-1983) ranks amongst the greatest of the 20th century composers. His early career was greatly influenced by the eccentric Sitwell family (Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell) who had adopted him in 1919 when he left Oxford. From his humble origins in Oldham, Lancashire, he found himself catapulted into the glamour and sophisticated world of London society. His best known work of this period is Façade (1922), a brilliant, rhythmic entertainment to words by Edith Sitwell. His first concerto was completed in 1936. During the war he wrote film music, including the marvellous score for Laurence Olivier’s Henry V.
His personal life involved him in a 15 year relationship with a woman older than himself, Alice Wimborne, who helped to nurture his formidable talent. However, alone by 1947, he was visiting Argentina when he met and married Susana Gil, then 22 years old. They decided to live in Italy which he had first visited in 1919 and where in 1936, inspired by Alice, he had written the Violin Concerto for Jascha Heifetz. He preferred the light and peace of the Bay of Naples to England. They settled on the Island of Ischia where he lived for the next 35 years, in fact for the rest of his life.
His outstanding works are the three concerti for viola, violin and ‘cello, the monumental choral work Belshazzar’s Feast, the two symphonies, a lyric opera Troilus and Cressida, a comic opera The Bear, and the scores for three Shakespearian films starring Laurence Olivier, Henry V, Hamlet and Richard III.
He wrote two coronation marches: Crown Imperial for King George VI and Orb and Sceptre for Queen Elizabeth together with the Te Deum. He received great acclaim in the 1950s and 1960s, in the US where in 1955 Gregor Piatigorsky commissioned the Cello Concerto, and in 1957 George Szell The Partita for the Cleveland Orchestra who then made (according to William) a “stupendous” recording of his Second Symphony. He was commissioned in 1968 by André Kostelanetz and The New York Philharmonic Orchestra to compose Capriccio Burlesco for their 125th anniversary year; in 1969 Improvisations on an Impromptu of Benjamin Britten dedicated to the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra and Joseph Krips in memory of Adeline Smith Dorfman, and in 1981 Prologo e Fantasia for Mstislav Rostropovitch and the National Symphony Orchestra.
In the words of the critic Michael Kennedy “His 75th and 80th birthday concerts in London were illustrious events (…) he was regarded as one of the great men of British music”. He was knighted in 1951 and received the highly prestigious Order of Merit in 1967.