Violin Concerto (Walton)

The Violin Concerto by William Walton was written in 1938–39 and dedicated to Jascha Heifetz, who commissioned the work and performed it at its premiere on 7 December 1939 with the Cleveland Orchestra conducted by Artur Rodziński.

By 1936 William Walton had established a position among the leading British composers of the day, but he was a slow and far from prolific worker and in that year he felt obliged to choose between accepting a commission from Jascha Heifetz or one from Joseph Szigeti and Benny Goodman, who wanted a work for violin and clarinet.

During the course of composition he was bitten by a tarantula and marked the incident by incorporating a tarantella into the work in a passage he called "quite gaga, I may say, and of doubtful propriety".

[2] In mid-1939 he visited Heifetz in New York to work on the piece together, incorporating the violinist's suggestions for making the solo part as effective as possible.

[3] The British Council hoped to present the premiere of the concerto during the 1939 New York World's Fair, along with new works by Ralph Vaughan Williams, Arthur Bliss and Arnold Bax given during the event, but Heifetz was otherwise committed on the proposed date of the concert.

[6] The contract between composer and soloist gave Heifetz the exclusive rights to the concerto for two years, but as he could not travel to Britain he waived them to allow the work to be given there.

[11] The movement is not in strict sonata form but does not depart markedly from it, and the second subject is a quiet and flowing melody for strings and woodwind.

[15] The opening presto requires extreme virtuosity from the soloist – Palmer points to harmonics followed by pizzicati in a fast-moving two-in-a-bar).

[23] In the 2001 edition of Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Byron Adams writes, "The Violin Concerto is an ingenious reconciliation of the demands of virtuosity and Romantic expressiveness.