CLASSICAL

Walton: Symphonies 1 & 2

Onyx Walton’s two symphonies present a doorway into his soul. The first, written at a time of great personal unrest (the shift from the pulverising angst of the first three movements to the unadulterated joy of the finale symptomatic of extreme swings in his love life) sits in stark contrast to the more cohesive mindset of the Second. What is interesting about these new recordings by Krill Karabits and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra is the sense of cross-fertilisation. Karabits’ reading of the First is suitably intense and monumental, but he curiously underplays its savagery. The opening is organic and momentous; the scherzo stabbing and flirtatious, though with less focus on the prescribed “con malizia”; the Andante injected with painful longing and desire; the finale pompous to the end. Yet there is a cold cragginess that hints at Siberian influence. It’s there, too, in the Second Symphony, an altogether more unified vehicle of the composer’s expressive and technical power.