Few people really knew Sir William Walton. He was disarmingly reserved in
public and rarely gave interviews. Even musicians who worked with him, myself
included, generally found him a man of very few words. He had a gentle
authority, but his reticence seemed so distant from the audacity of his
Façade or the extroversion of his Belshazzar's Feast, that
he came across as something of an enigma. He was in fact quite clear about
his artistic principles and intentions, but chose to keep his personality at a
distance from the public, and that included most of his musical colleagues. To
them he gave no direct sign of the acute sensitivity and deep emotions that are
so poignantly expressed in works like his Viola Concerto, his Violin Concerto
and the Improvisations on an Impromptu of Benjamin Britten, although as a
conductor he communicated them most effectively.
But one person certainly did probe Sir William Walton's complex personality with profound understanding. Walton fell in love with Susana Gil, a beautiful and vivacious Argentinean, while visiting her country in 1948. They enjoyed 35 blissful years as husband and wife. For most of that time they lived in their glorious home in Ischia, where Lady Walton created a magnificent array of gardens called La Mortella, a source of inspiration to her husband as well as solace when in later years his health began to fail.19 years after his death, her recollections of their times together, and of the composer's artistic life are still vivid. As the classical music world celebrates the Walton centenary, I spoke with Lady Walton at the Savoy Hotel in London.
Jon Tolansky: How did you meet Sir William?
Susana Walton: In 1948 William had recently lost the one person in his life that he adored — that was Alice Wimborne, a wealthy English Viscountess, with whom he had been living. For 15 years she had been the person really in the center of his life and he could not get over the horror of her dying of cancer in such a short time. She died practically in his arms and he was utterly traumatized. Well, Leslie Boosey, who was the head of the Performing Rights Society, wanted to help him, so he invited him as a guest to a very important international conference of world performing rights societies in Buenos Aires. They were trying to convince Peron to sign on the dotted line and join them, as at that time no one in Argentina earned a cent of royalties for anything.
William, having a weird sense of humor, said he only accepted to come because he was certain that Buenos Aires was the center of the white slave trade, which was complete nonsense. Buenos Aires was very well organized at that time and the only slave he found was me! I was in the British Council in Argentina and had been there for just six months when William arrived. I was given the task of looking after him; the day after he came, which of course was the day after I had first met him, I organized a press conference and to my enormous surprise — and horror — he trotted up at the end of the conference to say, "You will be very surprised to hear that I am going to marry you." I thought, "What has happened to me? Why do I have to have this lunatic under my care for three weeks? He must be drunk."
Well, that evening I had a big dinner party that I had arranged
for the British delegates and as they arrived William at once came up to me
and said "Have you been thinking about what I said?" I said, "Of course not
— I thought you were drunk." After that, every morning at 11 o'clock, he came
to the office to pick me up to go shopping — ostensibly. We never shopped
for anything, and each time he would say, "Well, when is it? When are we going
to get married?" So, after the first week I started to think that maybe it wasn't
a joke, maybe he really meant it. By now I was entranced by him because
although he was 25 years older than I, he was so adorable and fascinating. He had this
special touch with women. He loved women and he knew exactly how to please them
and humor them. I began to think that maybe I couldn't afford to lose this man.
But he was clever. One day he didn't say anything. So I said, "Something's wrong today — what's happened?" He said, "I haven't noticed anything wrong, thank you very much. I think it's a normal day." "But you haven't asked me to marry you!" "Oh I'll never ask you again," he said. "You've pulled my leg for the last two weeks; I am never going to ask you again. So, forget it. I am going to marry the first woman I see in the street and that's it — thank you." I said "No, no, I don't think that's a good idea, you had better ask once more and see what happens. Maybe this time you'll be lucky." So we were engaged.
JT: To most people he worked with, he gave the impression of being very reserved and controlled. Did you find him that way?
SW: William was very sensitive, but this was not immediately apparent. To look at him, I thought maybe he might have been a conventionally dressed bank manager. But inside there was this great strength and passion and also such tenderness. If anyone was cruel to him he just couldn't bear it. He would just collapse. He just couldn't contemplate friction, except when he wanted to defend one of his works — then he was a lion. But apart from that there was such gentleness in him and it showed very particularly in his relationships with women. He could never resist seeing a beautiful pair of legs walk by. He followed. When I said this once at a presentation for my biography of him after he had died, the ladies were furious with me , but you see I was never jealous in the least bit. There was no need to be. I knew that I was in the center of William's heart, but that didn't mean that he belonged to me. He was a free man and he was an enormously important artist, so how could I think that he was only mine? So, of course if he saw these beautiful legs go by, he went — and then he returned.
JT: At first you and he lived for a short while in England. What was that like?
SW: When I came over with him in 1949 there was in England a wonderful renaissance of talent that we were a special part of. All William's friends were extraordinary — people like Henry Moore and Laurence Olivier were giants in their own fields. We were surrounded by marvelous poets, writers, actors and playwrights — and everyone was so very relaxed about it all.
JT: Sir William was a highly cultured man who was particularly drawn to literature and the theater. Where do you think this interest came from?
SW: That I think came from his early relationship with the famous Sitwell family of writers (Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell). William was enormously lucky because when he was at Oxford University the younger Sitwell, Sacheverell, was sent by his brother Osbert to look for a very talented undergraduate to sponsor, and William was recommended to him. Osbert had one look at him and decided there and then that he had genius. This was real luck for William and it was they who introduced him to the world of literature and poetry and they also took him round Europe to show him all the marvelous buildings, paintings and works of sculpture. He then never forgot where he had seen something that really made a powerful impression on him. And this all meant that in his general mental makeup in those early days he was already very sophisticated, as you can hear in his earliest works.
JT: It's intriguing that he failed his examinations at Oxford and yet at the same time he was already becoming so successful. How did he fit in there?
SW: Oxford was the turning point in his life. There was no money at all in his family to pay for his education, so the scholarship he won there put him in the place where the doors opened for him. When he was accepted into the choir school as a boy he was so wily. He decided he would stay on after his voice broke. To make that happen he started writing music for the other boys and sent his compositions to the dean, who happened to be a fine musician and was thrilled to find that one of the small choirboys had a talent for composition. So when William's voice broke when he was 13 he did not send him home like the other choirboys. He kept him in the choir school for another three years so that then he could go to Christchurch College as an undergraduate. Imagine that for luck.
In fact, there were virtually no professors around because they were mostly away doing war service of some sort, and this is where William began to be remarkably resourceful and individualistic. In the Radcliffe Library he found an up-to-date collection of manuscripts of music by important contemporary composers — Stravinsky, Ravel, Satie and many more. He just sat down and read and read them, all on his own. That's how he learned how to orchestrate. In his late teens, and entirely self-taught, he already had a profound knowledge and awareness of the new modern movements in music.
JT: When you got married, Walton was in his mid-40s and enjoying particular success from music he had just written for the film Henry V. Did you feel then that he had changed very much from that earlier, heady period when he was just starting out?
SW: Well he had changed a lot since then as a composer, but at the same time that early background was absolutely essential for the films which in a sense were an evolution from the literary subjects and influences of the early days. Having said that, the great success of the big Shakespeare film epics came from William's collaboration with Laurence Olivier. He and Larry were great friends and really got on extremely well. They both enormously admired each other and they discussed aspects of what they both did freely and creatively. And there were really new and pioneering things to discuss: for instance William started writing music that, instead of cutting out when the voice came in, continued whilst Larry was speaking, to enhance the sounds of the spoken words. That was entirely new in films. The music integrated so effectively in this new way that Larry was justified in saying that the greatest success of Henry V, Hamlet and Richard III (all Olivier productions) was in fact the music. Don't forget that at that time it was unfashionable to do anything Shakespeare outside the traditional theaters that performed his works, and so there was mainly a connoisseur audience for his plays. The huge success of those films, particularly because of the music, really popularized Shakespeare in a radical way.
JT: You went to live in Italy not that long after you were married. There seems to be so much of Italy's atmosphere in quite a number of his works.
SW: Well, William had been crazy for Italy ever since the Sitwells had taken him for a holiday to the Amalfi coast. I don't think he ever recovered. He could not believe the ravishing light, the beauty of the air and the color of the sea. He had always wished he could live in Italy and so when we married — and he was already 46 — he decided that at last the time had come to settle in the bay of Naples. That's why we went to Ischia. He totally abandoned a thrivingly successful lifestyle in London to come away and write his music in the peace and quiet of the idyllic place where he had always wanted to live. Mind you, he would not have managed this if he had not married me!
Those first years were a tremendous struggle and had it not been for my Argentinean toughness we wouldn't have survived. Of course he was particularly inspired by the entrancing paradise garden I created there for him. In this lovely place he could find peace and harmony and resolve the problems of his composition surrounded by this beauty. I know this was important for him because when William was in Ischia his whole physical being was so wonderfully relaxed — he was very energetic, he had no wrinkles and he was in terrific bonhomie. And yet, in those last years of his life, the moment he got to London he had to be in a wheelchair because he felt so bad that he couldn't walk.
JT: I remember how little Sir William spoke when he rehearsed his music. Did he speak much about his works and their interpretation to you?
SW: Indeed he did. William only conducted because he felt he needed to let everyone know how he wanted his music to sound. So there were no fireworks from him. He was very straight in what he wanted and knew exactly what had to be done. That's one reason why the orchestras in England liked him so much. Also he didn't bully them and they enjoyed his music very much — this is basic. But he didn't conduct to entertain himself. He just wanted to set down how he wanted his music performed. Then anyone else could do whatever they wanted afterwards, but at least the evidence of what he really wanted was there.
He never showed off and in fact it was a physical effort. He was not a professional conductor, as he was a composer, so before a performance he used to rehearse in front of a mirror for days. This is because he was so concerned to get it absolutely right. He also had very precise views about other conductors' interpretations of his works. There were some he most certainly did not approve of, but you need to have your music performed so you have to shut up. That is especially why he wanted his performances to be known and recorded. Others could do his music how they liked, but people could at least know how he did it.
Incidentally, he used to say that one of the best performances of Belshazzar's Feast that he felt he had conducted was at the Hollywood Bowl in 1951 when he used a really small chorus of professional singers. When he conducted it in England and he had these massed choruses of hundreds of people, he felt it was so difficult to move them. With the small professional chorus in Hollywood he could go really fast and be precise — and this is what he enjoyed.
JT: I think one of the most outstanding of all Sir William's recordings is his accompaniment of Jascha Heifetz in the Violin Concerto. They both capture the romantic intensity with such a wonderful combination of ardor and discipline. Do you remember the occasion?
SW: Very well indeed. You know that William was very much in love with Alice Wimborne when he wrote the work back in the 1930s. She was perfect for him because she understood music, she was immensely wealthy, she was very sophisticated and she adored and cocooned him. So when Heifetz asked William to write a concerto, she asked him where would he like to write it. Naturally William said Ravello, one of the places he so loved at that time. Having Alice there in that heavenly place, Villa Cimbrone, where they stayed at the very top of a hill with mesmerizing views and the fabulous climate, must have been the happiest time of his life. It brought out all this lusciously romantic music. But of course at the same time the work was also spiky and contrapuntal — he hadn't lost any of his youthful-angry-young-man instincts! The two artistic personalities of William Walton really are almost encapsulated as one in the Violin Concerto. And you know, the intense feeling in this music and other works by William makes him so alive for me now. I have lost him physically, but he is with me. And he still helps me make great decisions in my life now — so I have to be careful!
If you would like to respond to this
interview, please write to letters@andante.com.
