Spitfire Prelude and Fugue

It’s a superb piece: a stirring prelude, introduced by fanfares and based around a noble march melody, followed by a brilliant, virtuoso workout for full orchestra. Yet Walton’s Prelude and Fugue (The Spitfire) (as it is officially titled) was not originally written for the concert hall but for a film. Like many composers in the 1940s, Walton was eager to help his country’s war effort by writing music for morale-boosting patriotic movies. The First of the Few, released in 1942, tells the story of R.J. Mitchell (played by Leslie Howard), the designer of the Spitfire, who died of cancer aged just 42. The following year, Walton adapted several sequences from the score into this brilliant concert work. The film’s main titles form the Prelude, followed by a brilliant orchestral fugue, as factory workers labour around the clock to assemble the fighter. A haunting central section, with solo violin, offers a brief reflection on Mitchell’s private tragedy, before—to blazing trumpets—the finished aircraft soars triumphantly into the sky.