Much like his later decision to write an opera following Britten’s acclaim for his, Walton was often spurred on by competition.Ĭompleted in 1919, the work underwent a number of revisions, complicated by the original score getting lost in the post between Italy and England for more than a year, and although it was likely performed in 1919 in an informal setting, the official premiere (in Liverpool) did not happen until 1924, and the London premiere in 1929, the same year as the premiere of the Viola Concerto that solidified Walton’s reputation as a leading composer. We know from letters and library records that Debussy, Ravel and Schoenberg’s music was encountered in score form by Walton at Oxford’s Christ Church choir school around the time of commencing work on the Piano Quartet in 1918 (aged just 16), but the specific stimulus for the work was his meeting Herbert Howells, ten years his senior, who had been receiving great critical acclaim for his Piano Quartet.
His piano playing was also described mostly unfavourably, making it extraordinary that his Piano Quartet could be so evolved. He later credited the violin as being useful to study for ear training, but said ‘I could never organise my fingers and it sounded so awful’. From the youthful exuberance of the early Piano Quartet through to the unconventional but masterful Violin Sonata, they offer a fascinating glimpse of his stylistic journey, including his brief exploration of techniques very far away from the world of the Walton familiar to listeners of the majority of his music.īorn in 1902 in Oldham, Lancashire, to parents who taught singing, he received his first violin lessons aged seven or eight, with very little success, according to both him and his family. The four works on this album, namely all of the composer’s chamber works involving both violin and piano, represent a microcosm of Sir William Walton’s compositional output between 19.