‘These Walton songs are really terrific,’ wrote the great accompanist Gerald Moore; ‘everything WW does is impressive – why the devil doesn’t he write more songs?’

From early experiments, via Edith Sitwell settings that build on the success of Façade, to music for the silver screen and two well-loved cycles heard here in their original intimate versions with piano and guitar, the complete collection fits on a single album.

But what an album! Four decades after Walton’s death, three imaginative young artists bring fresh voices to the feast, revelling with infectious enjoyment in the composer’s endlessly beguiling inventiveness and sparkling wit.

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A Song for the Lord Mayor’s Table (1962): 1. The Lord Mayor’s Table
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A Song for the Lord Mayor’s Table (1962): 2. Glide Gently
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A Song for the Lord Mayor’s Table (1962): 3. Wapping Old Stairs
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A Song for the Lord Mayor’s Table (1962): 4. Holy Thursday
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A Song for the Lord Mayor’s Table (1962): 5. The Contrast
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A Song for the Lord Mayor’s Table (1962): 6. Rhyme
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Anon in Love (1960): 1. Fain would I change that note
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Anon in Love (1960): 2. O stay, sweet love
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Anon in Love (1960): 3. Lady, when I behold the roses
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Anon in Love (1960): 4. My Love in her attire
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Anon in Love (1960): 5. I gave her Cakes and I gave her Ale
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Anon in Love (1960): 6. To couple is a custom
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Four Early Songs (1918–20): 1. Child’s Song
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Four Early Songs (1918–20): 2. Song
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Four Early Songs (1918–20): 3. A Lyke-Wake Song
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Four Early Songs (1918–20): 4. The Winds
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Tritons (1921)
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Under the greenwood tree (1936)
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Beatriz’s Songs (1942, from ‘Christopher Columbus’, arr. Christopher Palmer 1974)
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Three ‘Façade’ Settings (1932): 1. Daphne
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Three ‘Façade’ Settings (1932): 2. Through gilded trellises
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Three ‘Façade’ Settings (1932): 3. Old Sir Faulk

Europadisc Review

Although Walton’s gateway into music was through singing – he was a chorister at Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, before becoming an undergraduate at Christ Church at the tender age of 16 – he wrote curiously little for the solo voice. Aside from such choral masterpieces as Belshazzar’s Feast, there’s the precociously brilliant ‘entertainment’ Façade to texts by Edith Sitwell, but there the texts are spoken rather than sung. Walton’s actual song settings – short cycles and individual items – fit comfortably onto a single CD, and have rarely been recorded together. A disc featuring Felicity Lott and Martyn Hill on Naxos dates back to 1997, so a new complete recording of all Walton’s songs, including three world premieres, is very welcome.

On this album from Delphian Records, the young soprano Siân Dicker is partnered by pianist Krystal Tunnicliffe and (in the cycle Anon in Love, originally written for Peter Pears and Julian Bream) guitarist Saki Kato. Recorded in St Mary’s Church, Haddington, they are captured in well-focused sound with an ideal balance and a nice bloom to the sound. Dicker’s voice is comfortable over a wide range, with a notably rich middle register, and she’s alive to the often humorous and sometimes mischievous texts as set by Walton, always keenly projected, but is also capable of tender warmth in the more sensitive numbers.

The songs range from 1918 (when Walton was still in his mid-teens) to his final cycle, A Song for the Lord Mayor’s Table, composed in 1962 and first performed by Elizabeth Schwarzkopf accompanied by Gerald Moore at that year’s City of London Festival. It is this cycle that serves as the jubilant album opener, and Dicker and Tunnicliffe throw themselves into the first song with disciplined abandon, the tone festive but the pulse steady. The second song – a setting of Wordsworth’s ‘Glide Gently’ – brings the first moment of reflectiveness with a serene evocation of the River Thames. The set takes a lively, earthy turn with ‘Wapping Old Stairs’, which begins with an infectiously catchy handle and just a hint of bluesiness. ‘Holy Thursday’ shifts the scene to St Paul’s Cathedral, and the mood is sombre to match William Blake’s contemplative text: Dicker deploys a marvellously wide dynamic range, and the softness of the close is brilliantly realised. ‘The Contrast’ is a sparkling comparison of the liveliness of the City with the dreariness of the countryside, and the cycle ends with a spikily tintinnabulous transformation of the traditional rhyme ‘Oranges and Lemons’.

Just as enjoyable is Anon in Love, a collection of anonymous texts compiled (like A Song for the Lord Mayor’s Table) by Christopher Hasall. Written for the 1960 Aldeburgh Festival, it explores a captivating soundworld, and the range of touch and nuance brought to bear by Saki Kato makes it difficult to believe that Walton had never previously written for the guitar. Kato and Dicker make a terrific partnership, working together as one in their phrasing, shaping and pacing. Though there are moments of mischievous humour in the cycle’s latter stages, the lasting impression is one of wonder at the intimacy created by the combination of guitar and voice, as if eavesdropping on some private music-making.

The album then winds back some 40 years for the Four Early Songs, settings of Swinburne which number among Walton’s earliest compositions. The last of these, the vividly stormy ‘The Winds’, is already well-known, but the other three were unpublished until 1922, and this is their first recording. If not on quite the same level ‘The Winds’, they contain some magical moments, such as the fragile textures for the final stanza of no.2 (‘Song’). There are jazzy harmonic inflections in the dreamy ‘Lyke-Wake Song’, and ‘The Winds’ itself receives a thrillingly turbulent performance.

Another miniature masterpiece is Tritons (1921), a setting of words by the 17th-century Scottish poet William Drummond. Its biting angularity and elaborate piano part show that the young Walton had quickly absorbed key elements of early modernism during his studies at Oxford. Two other individual numbers, Under the Greenwood Tree (1936) and Beatriz’s Song (1942) were written as incidental music, for a film and radio play respectively. The former demonstrates a convincing faux-Elizabethan flavour, while the latter – for Louis MacNeice’s radio drama about Christopher Columbus – enjoys a marvellously rapt performance by Dicker and Tunnicliffe.

The disc closes with the Three Façade Settings (1932), their texts and music adapted from the earlier ‘entertainment’. Walton himself thought that these settings did the texts better justice than the original, and it’s difficult to disagree when you hear these wonderfully attentive performances. ‘Daphne’ is trance-like, ‘Through gilded trellises’ hauntingly unsettling, and there’s a real jazzy swing to ‘Old Sir Faulk’, ensuring that this compelling disc ends in similar gleeful high spirits to those with which it began. Walton fans owe a huge debt of gratitude to Delphian, Siân Dicker and her engaging colleagues for this welcome addition to the catalogue.

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Condition	Description
New	Brand new item, only ever sourced from the official UK distributor. Usually seal-wrapped, although a minority of labels do not use seal-wrap.
Used - Mint	Used item in excellent condition. Not usually seal-wrapped.
Used - Good	Used item with some minor signs of wear and tear. Never seal-wrapped.
Used - Acceptable	Used item with obvious scuffs or cosmetic damage to the case or booklet. Never seal-wrapped.

Condition	Description
New	Brand new item, only ever sourced from the official UK distributor. Usually seal-wrapped, although a minority of labels do not use seal-wrap.
Used - Mint	Used item in excellent condition. Not usually seal-wrapped.
Used - Good	Used item with some minor signs of wear and tear. Never seal-wrapped.
Used - Acceptable	Used item with obvious scuffs or cosmetic damage to the case or booklet. Never seal-wrapped.

Walton - Complete Song Collection

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Europadisc Review

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