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Programme Notes

WILLIAM TURNER WALTON (1902-1983)

FAÇADE: EIGHT SCENES FROM SUITES NOs 1 AND 2

  • Fanfare
  • Scotch Rhapsody
  • Country Dance
  • Noche Espagnola
  • Popular Song
  • Old Sir Faulk
  • Swiss Yodelling Song
  • Polka
  • Valse

 

The original version of Façade, an Entertainment was performed for the first time privately, in January 1923, by a chamber ensemble of six players accompanying Edith Sitwell as she read a series of her poems. The first public performance was six months later, when its 'modernism' and jazz rhythms, and the inconsequential words of the text, caused it to be denounced as cacophonous. In 1931 Walton orchestrated eleven numbers from the original twenty-one for Frederick Ashton's ballet Façade, first produced for the Camargo Society and revived later by the Ballet Rambert, the Vic-Wells Ballet and the Royal Ballet.

The two orchestral suites soon entered the concert repertoire and have lost none of the satirical bite the music had in the dance theatre. Walton's scintillating score wittily exploits the pop idiom of the 1920s: it was composed at a time when popular dance music was beneath serious notice and 'hot jazz' was thought ugly and vaguely improper. There are numerous targets for Walton's ingenuity as a parodist. The so-called Scotch Rhapsody that follows the opening fanfare, and could hardly be less rhapsodic, is a take-off of the Scotch 'snap' (and ends with a music-hall salute); and the Swiss yodelling song resonates lazily with absurd yodelling calls in irrelevant keys, among which can be heard a distant echo of Rossini's William Tell. Façade is that previous rarity, a musical joke that is genuinely funny.

Programme Notes by Paul Vaughan ©

 

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