HS, I was at the first performance by your old friend Julian Bream of the Bagatelles on 21 January 1973 in the QEH. There's an amusing passage in Bream's book "A Life on the Road", in a passage about commissioning works from composers:
I got short shrift not too long ago from old Willie Walton. He wrote five superb Bagatelles for me back in the early seventies, but somehow he'd convinced himself I don't play them often enough. I've been begging him, almost, to do me another piece, so on his last visit to London I presented myself at his hotel to be given a stern but gentle lecture about my responsibilities. I felt a bit like a naughty little schoolboy who'd been playing truant, and although I acquitted myself well, I left with the distinct impression that he thought I'd been trying to pull a fast one.
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