# Walton's Viola Concerto - Making the Case for Genius



## JosefinaHW (Nov 21, 2015)

Saving for myself



xuantu said:


> Thanks for your insightful posts, kmisho!
> 
> I first came to know Walton's viola concerto (1928-9, revised in 1961) through a version played by Yehudi Menuhin. It is such an enigmatic work with all the transient brightness and the hazy melancholy perfused throughout. I know little about musicology--now I guess the mystic quality of this work must have something to do with the way Walton handled the major/minor conflict, the Locrian mode and harmonization that's mentioned above. For me, he is a 20th century Romanticist and a magician who knows how to weave his material.
> 
> Speaking of other modern viola concertos, I also like the haunting Penderecki (1983), the dynamic Schnittke (1985), the poetic Takemitsu (_A String Around Autumn_, 1989), the otherworldly Gubaidulina (1996) and the simplistic Steven Gerber (1996), but my favorite is absolutely the unfinished Bartók (1945, now available in three versions), a 20-minute work of enormous dimensions. Recently, I "rediscovered" the wonderful concerto by Hans Henkemans (1954), very charismatic. It seems that the shortage of violists' warhorses is gradually becoming history.


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