The Civilized Composer

British Composer Sir William Walton, 58, is an orderly man who prefers to leave no compositional form neglected. Accordingly, he has written at least "one of everything" during his career: a symphony, an opera (Troilus and Cressida), concertos for solo instruments, chamber works. Having covered the circuit once, he is now making the rounds again: last week Sir William was in Manhattan to hear the visiting Cleveland Orchestra give the New York premiere of his Symphony No. 2.

Walton recalls his First Symphony, finished in 1935, as "the angry-young-man sort of thing." The new work is "slightly more civilized--maybe too civilized." As played under George Szell's direction last week, it emerged as a massive, melodious composition, almost Straussian in its traditional conservatism. In its three movements it alternates between moods of surgingly sensuous lyricism and a kind of heraldic pomp reminiscent of Walton's own Orb and Sceptre march, written in 1953 for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth. The symphony's greatest strength lies in the raw dramatic power that never seems to desert Walton. But on balance there is more pomp than circumstance in the Second Symphony, more craftsmanship than inspiration ("Very well scored if I do say so," said Sir William).

Walton, who now lives with his Argentine-born wife on the Italian island of Ischia, is well aware that he is considered old hat by a younger generation of English composers. Perhaps because he flunked out of Oxford for failing algebra, he has never had the slightest interest in "mucking about the tone-rows." And even if he did, he is not persuaded that it would help his reputation. These days, Walton observes, musical one-upmanship has become such a complex art that "it is quite possible to go in and out of fashion four or five times during one's lifetime."

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