Word: waltons
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...William Walton stands second in England's current trinity of famous composers. Less prolific than either 80-year-old Ralph Vaughan Williams or 39-year-old Benjamin Britten, he has turned out some pieces (e.g., his Symphony and Viola Concerto) that are considered better than any of their more celebrated works. In the U.S. he is known for Façade, an impudent accompaniment for Edith Sitwell's eccentric verses; Belshazzar's Feast, a big dramatic choral work; and Orb and Sceptre, a grandiose march commissioned for the coronation. Visiting the U.S. with his Argentine born wife...
Standing a well-proportioned six feet and looking something like a less rugged version of Cinemactor George Sanders, Sir William (knighted in 1951) is a gracious example of a sheltered English composer. Unlike that other popular British musician, Sir Thomas Beecham, Walton is no heady phrasemaker, either in speech or music. Although his music often sounds witty and facile, he writes slowly and for perfection...
...Walton leaped to fame in 1926 with Facade. His Belshazzar was, to London Sunday Times Critic Ernest Newman, "bursting with a very fury of exultation." Walton wrote a Violin Concerto for his friend Jascha Heifetz, but was driving an ambulance in London during the war when the work was premiered and never heard it until it was recorded...
...that time Composer Walton, a kind of late-blooming prodigy, already feared that his ability was fading. "Today's white hope is tomorrow's black sheep," he remarked when he was 37. "I seriously advise all serious composers to die at the age of 37." His production, always slow, fell off sharply, although he turned out excellent film scores for Laurence Olivier's Hamlet and Henry...
While Sir Laurence Olivier and his actress wife Vivien Leigh gave a dinner party at their Buckinghamshire farm (the guests: Composer Sir William Walton, Actor Sir Ralph Richardson and their ladies), burglars got into the house. Using Olivier's own ladder, they looted a bedroom of $19,600 worth of jewels and furs. Gentleman Farmer ("I keep a few pigs") Olivier recalled that his London home had been robbed in March, decided: "It is just not our year." Jockey Sir Gordon Richards, on the other hand, was convinced that there is some honor among thieves when his stolen spurs...