As he had with the song cycle, Bream helped Walton with technical details of guitar playing, and he edited the final version for performance.
[2] The five movements are: Bream gave the first performance of the complete work in the Assembly Rooms, Bath on 27 May 1972 in a concert marking the composer's seventieth birthday.
The five movements are: The London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by André Previn, gave the first performance of the work at the Festival Hall on 4 May 1976.
[4] The choreographer Sir Frederick Ashton, a friend of the composer since the 1920s, proposed to use the Varii Capricci for a new ballet ostensibly set in the garden of La Mortella, Walton's house on Ischia, and asked him to make some adjustments to the finale.
[8] Reviewing the New York production, Oleg Kerensky wrote, "Everybody expected Varii Capricci, Sir Frederick Ashton's new ballet ... to be a hit.
But that's what it is – a different Ashton, recalling the jazzy and witty styles of his Façade and Jazz Calendar but with more than a hint of the decadent atmosphere of Nijinska's Les biches".