Walton: Belshazzar's Feast - Vaughan Williams: Job

William Walton’s celebrated cantata Belshazzar’s Feast started out as a modest-scale commission from the BBC in 1929 and ended up as a colossal work for orchestra, two brass ensembles, double chorus and solo baritone. Walton tells the story of the fall of Babylon with music of extraordinary vividness, from the splendour of the feast scene itself to the visceral terror of the writing on the wall. Andrew Davis conducts his BBC forces with great authority and evident passion for the music. Also featured on this thrilling recording is Vaughan Williams’ orchestral classic Job, premiered in the same year as Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast. It tells the story of Job from the Old Testament, filtered through William Blake’s illustrations. In nine scenes, Job contains some of Vaughan Williams’ most vivid music, all brought to dazzling life in this unrivalled performance.