WALTON. Viola Concerto (Revised version). Paul Doktor (viola), London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Edward Downes. CBS 0 72677 (12 in., 42s. 9d.).

I greatly looked forward to this record, since the Hindemith was entirely new to me and the Walton, a particular favourite, has been long absent from the catalogues. Alas, had little pleasure from it, simply because of the deficiencies of the recording.

Technically, Paul Doktor plays most wonderfully (I have seldom heard such dexterity or such perfect intonation on the viola) but there is virtually no quiet, lyrical reflection, a particular loss in any perform ance of the Walton, and the constant loudness of the solo instrument gets wearisome on the ear. Whether Doktor lacks this quality or how much it is due to the recording I wouldn't like to say, never having heard him in the concert hall.

But the worst thing is the recording of the orchestra which is not nearly clean enough, especially shown in the Walton tuttis. The sort of texture Walton writes needs a clear, even perhaps slightly dry, acoustic : here it is' so reverberant that detail mostly goes for nothing. What with this reverberance and the soloist's close positioning, the whole thing amounts to something near a travesty of the score.

The soloist enters at the end of the third bar; at which point the first violins become inaudible, as near as may be. It's true that they are muted, marked p and also to be played on the fingerboard: but that Walton intends them to be heard is evident from the expression marks he writes in. This sort of thing happens often, while the middle strings are especially weak. When the soloist is playing one can often hear the start of a woodwind phrase but not what happens to it.

The orchestra sounds just slightly better on the Hindemith side, perhaps because the scoring is relatively less complex. The fugato of the second movement—to take one place—starts cleanly enough and though the solo horn is just audible behind the soloist, the clarinet counterpoint cannot really be heard at all (and then the whole texture gets muddy again).

I might add that I got a second opinion on the Walton side, since I thought that either my ears might be deceiving me or that my gramophone might be reproducing the record badly. My impression is fully supported, even after testing on more than one kind of reproducer.

I do not know how much I might like the Hindemith if I heard it under better conditions. I do know that the Walton concerto is a really lovely work and I feel so strongly about it that I desperately hope that nobody will judge it from how it sounds here. T.R.