Prom 72 - 10.09.14: BBC SO, Berthaud / Litton

[Maclintick]

I thought it was common knowledge that RVW had Beethoven 5 in mind when he composed the scherzo/finale link. If he had tried to emulate Beethoven's 'glory' here (and isn't LvB's tune deliberately rather commonplace?) I don't think it would have worked at all. The oom-pah bass is no more deliberately banal than anything in Mahler, and the tune which it accompanies has never reminded me of Roll out the barrel in all the 50-odd years I have known this symphony.

A description of the Walton viola concerto as 'banal' leaves me speechless.

I don't give a toss whether RVW4 is the greatest British symphony - I loathe all artistic championships and league tables.

Agree 100% Rauschie. With characteristic humility VW admitted that he'd "cribbed" the idea of the scherzo/finale bridge in his 4th Symphony from LVB's 5th, but of course, the emotional burdens of these 2 passages are worlds apart. As Rauschwerk observes, the succeeding "oompah bass" is as bitingly satirical as anything by Mahler, or Shostakovich, for that matter, and has parallels in VW's "Job", contemporaneous with the 4th. If we take VW at his word, he denied that the 4th represented his angry reaction to "anything external, e.g. the state of Europe", at that time spiralling into madness, so the "oompah bass" may not be a direct p***-take of strutting militarists, but it certainly takes a swipe at the world's stupid onrush.

The Walton is a masterpiece of the genre - for which generations of viola-players have cause to be thankful.