Reputation Restored?

Donald Macleod looks at William Walton's later years, a period that became a time of ease and prosperity for him.

Walton's reputation may have fallen in Britain, but he was still respected in the USA and enjoyed regular commissions from orchestras in New York, Washington, San Francisco and Chicago.

During the 1960s, Walton and his wife Susana built a stunning place of their own on the Mediterranean island of Ischia. In her words: "...it was now time to let the music speak for itself...". But still the British critics hammered his work. Suspicious of his jet-setting, expatriate life they could not bring themselves to appreciate his compositions as much as they had twenty years earlier. Not only did Walton clash with classical music journalists he also fell out with the BBC.

Eventually Walton's work was to become appreciated again. His achievements were recognised with gala concerts in London arranged for his 75th birthday and then his 80th, a year before he died in 1983.