Doing Justice to William Walton
An unjustly neglected British composer
Outside of Austria and Germany, the historic centers of Western classical music, most countries have a particular composer whose work is generally thought to be especially representative of what used to be called their “national character.” In Italy, it is Verdi; in Russia, Tchaikovsky; in Finland, Sibelius; and in the U.S., Aaron Copland. But for 250 years, England was different. After the death in 1695 of Henry Purcell, no classical composer of major stature emerged until 1899, when Edward Elgar’s
Enigma Variations were premiered and entered the standard orchestral repertoire. Before then, England had been known to German-speaking musicians as