Belshazzar's Feast
Only with the premiere of his Viola Concerto in 1929 did Walton find real acclaim as a serious composer. That year brought a BBC commission for a choral work that became Belshazzar’s Feast, given a successful but controversial premiere (on account of its secular approach to a Biblical subject) in Leeds on 8 October 1931. Osbert Sitwell’s text, drawing on the Book of Daniel and Psalm 137, enabled Walton to create a highly dramatic concept lasting little more than 30 minutes. Its first of three continuous parts finds the chorus starkly evoking the Jews’ captivity in Babylon, an interlude for baritone enhancing the emotional intensity. Walton opens the second part by describing Babylon’s accumulated wealth, leading into an extended choral scena with the city’s decadence vividly depicted—not least with a jazzy sequence in praise of idolatrous gods. The baritone graphically describes the mysterious visitation of a human hand, whose writing on the wall predicts the overthrow of the Babylonian empire. The third part is a song of praise for the Jews’ liberation, its central section lamenting the demise of a great city, before an apotheosis where the full forces combine to exhilarating effect. Long thought unsuitable for religious performance on account of its barbaric splendour, the cantata has enjoyed lasting success on both sides of the Atlantic—highlighted by a notably memorable account at Walton’s 80th birthday concert in London on 29 March 1982.
