George Walker (1922-2018)

Series

Episode

Title

First
Broadcast

Repeated

Comments

2020

Prodigy

20200106

20211025 (R3)

Donald Macleod explores the life and music of George Walker, in conversation with his son Gregory. Today, Walker looks set for a glittering career as a concert pianist.

When Rosa King Walker announced to her five-year-old son George that, like it or not, he was going to have piano lessons, she can scarcely have been aware that she was dispatching him on a lifelong journey in music. Like many middle-class African-American parents of her generation, she had probably just wanted to make sure that her son was au fait with an important aspect of the dominant' culture. But things quickly escalated beyond his mother's original intentions. The boy took to the piano like a duck to water, and by his mid-teens he was off to pursue undergraduate music studies at Oberlin Conservatory in Ohio. After that came a period of post-graduate study at Philadelphia's Curtis Institute under the tutelage, among others, of the legendary Rudolf Serkin. Walker's concerto d退but came at the age of 23, when he performed one of the most challenging works in the repertoire, Rachmaninov's 3rd Piano Concerto, with the Philadelphia Orchestra, no less, under the great Eugene Ormandy. A stellar career on the concert platform surely beckoned, but in the event, things were not so straightforward. It took five years for Walker to find himself an agent, and when he finally did, he was told that it would be difficult getting bookings for a black classical pianist - a prediction which turned out, in the America of the 1950s, to be accurate. Walker had better luck in Europe, where he toured in 1953, but stress got the better of him and he developed a debilitating stomach ulcer. So gradually he began to turn his back on the idea of a solo career, gravitating instead towards a life in teaching - and, increasingly, composition.

Response (Laurence Dunbar)

Phyllis Bryn-Julson, soprano

George Walker, piano

String Quartet No 1 (1st mvt)

Son Sonora String Quartet

Lyric for Strings

London Symphony Orchestra

Paul Freeman, conductor

Piano Sonata No 1 (2nd and 3rd mvts)

Cello Sonata (2nd mvt)

Emmanuel Feldman, cello

Joy Cline-Phinney, piano

Trombone Concerto

Christian Lindberg, trombone

Malm怀 Symphony Orchestra

James DePriest, conductor

Produced by Chris Barstow for BBC Wales

The life and music of George Walker. Today, a glittering career as a concert pianist?

2020

La Boulangerie

20200107

20211026 (R3)

Donald Macleod explores the life and music of George Walker, in conversation with his son Gregory. Today Walker's Paris-bound, to study with the formidable Nadia Boulanger.

`Myth`, the composer Ned Rorem once wrote in an article for the New York Times, `credits every American town with two things: a 10-cent store and a Boulanger student.` He had a point. Since the founding of the American Conservatory at the Palace of Fontainebleau, an hour or so's train journey south-east of Paris, in the aftermath of World War I, a period of study with 'Mademoiselle' had become a virtual rite of passage for aspiring young musicians from over the pond. In a career lasting nearly six decades, Nadia Boulanger taught more than 600 of them, encouraging the craft of composers as different in their outlooks as Aaron Copland, Elliott Carter, Philip Glass and Burt Bacharach. Armed with a recent doctorate from the Eastman School of Music and funded by a Fulbright Scholarship, George Walker made the pilgrimage to France in 1957, staying on for a second year courtesy of a John H Whitney Fellowship. Boulanger was, he recalled in later life, `the first person to acknowledge and praise my gift for musical composition. She never told me how to write.` Nonetheless, Walker's time with Boulanger exposed to him to the cutting edge of contemporary musical thought, and marks a watershed in the evolution of his compositional style. Inspired by an encounter with Alban Berg's Violin Concerto, Walker's solo piano piece Spatials is an engaging if perhaps somewhat self-conscious adventure in strict serialism; but in his spiky Variations for Orchestra and the dynamic Piano Concerto, his new researches have been fully assimilated into his own musical persona.

The Bereaved Maid

Phyllis Bryn-Julson, soprano

George Walker, piano

Sonata No 1 for violin and piano

Gregory Walker, violin

New Philharmonia Orchestra

Paul Freeman, conductor

Five Fancies for clarinet and piano four hands (Theme and 5 variations)

Eric Thomas, clarinet

Vivian Taylor, John McDonald, piano

Piano Concerto (2nd mvt)

Natalie Hinderas, piano

Detroit Symphony Orchestra

Produced by Chris Barstow for BBC Wales

The life and music of George Walker. Today, Walker is Paris-bound, to study composition.

2020

Arrival

20200108

20211027 (R3)

Donald Macleod explores the life and music of George Walker, in conversation with his son Gregory. Today, commissions galore - including Walker's first venture into symphonic form.

More than three decades after he composed his earliest acknowledged work, George Walker received his first proper commission - proper' in the sense that he was actually paid for it. He finally seemed to have arrived as a composer, and from here on in, the majority of his pieces would be commissioned. On the menu in today's programme: a brass quintet, a cantata, a piano sonata and the first of the five works Walker termed Sinfonia', to distinguish them from the tradition of the Romantic symphony.

Music for Brass (Sacred and Profane)

American Brass Quintet

Joyce Mathis, soprano

Walter Turnbull, tenor

Boys Choir of Harlem

Orchestra of St Luke's

Warren Wilson, conductor

Piano Sonata No 4

Frederick Moyer, piano

Sinfonia No 1

Sinfonia Varsovia

Ian Hobson, conductor

Produced by Chris Barstow for BBC Wales

The life and music of George Walker. Today, Walker's first venture into symphonic form.

2020

Lilac Time

20200109

20211028 (R3)

Donald Macleod explores the life and music of George Walker, in conversation with his son Gregory. Today, recognition at last, as Walker wins the coveted Pulitzer Prize for Music.

When Walker got the phone call informing him of his epic win, the shock rendered him monosyllabic; in his autobiography, Reminiscences of an American Composer and Pianist, he recalls saying `Wow!` a lot. News soon got around - a Pulitzer was big news - and before long, there was a queue of journalists snaking down the driveway of the composer's house in Montclair, New Jersey, eager to extract a few bon mots from the great man. A Pulitzer Prize is a career-defining moment, which makes what happened next in Walker's career all the more surprising. `I got probably more publicity nationwide than perhaps any other Pulitzer Prize-winner,` he recalled in 2015. `But not a single orchestra approached me about doing the piece or any piece. It materialized in nothing.` The piece that won the prize was Lilacs, Walker's setting of verses from Walt Whitman's elegy on the death of Abraham Lincoln, When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd'. The Pulitzer Music Jury praised the `beautiful and evocative lyrical quality` of `this passionate, and very American, musical composition`.

Hey Nonny No (anon)

Phyllis Bryn-Julson, soprano

George Walker, piano

Po耀me for violin and orchestra

Gregory Walker, violin

Cleveland Chamber Symphony

Edwin London, conductor

In Time of Silver Rain

Mother Goose (Circa 2054)

Patricia Green, mezzo-soprano

Albert Lee, tenor

Sinfonia da Camera

Ian Hobson, conductor

Modus

Cygnus Ensemble

Produced by Chris Barstow for BBC Wales

The life and music of George Walker. Today, he wins the coveted Pulitzer Prize for Music.

2020

05 LAST

Visions

20200110

20211029 (R3)

Donald Macleod explores the life and music of George Walker, in conversation with his son Gregory. Today, the tragedy of the Charleston church massacre inspires Walker's last work.

George Walker had a tendency to play things close to his chest, even where his loved ones were concerned. Gregory Walker relates how the first time he became aware that his father had been working on a new violin concerto was when it turned up in the post one morning. Not only that, he was to give the premi耀re the following month - not with some local band, but with one of the world's great orchestras, the Philadelphia! Gregory Walker talks movingly about his father's tearful reaction to the work's first play-through; his character, by turns formal, affectionate, passionate, emotional, often angry; and about the experience of seeing him grapple with his swansong, the Sinfonia No 5, subtitled Visions', which he embarked on at the age of 93: `It was unforgettable to see someone who'd been a child prodigy, someone who had prided himself on keeping track of the most complex compositional concepts and trying to push himself beyond those complexities with each succeeding piece, reach a point where he was realising he could hardly do it anymore.`

Icarus in Orbit

Sinfonia da Camera

Ian Hobson, conductor

Piano Sonata No 5

Robert Pollock, piano

Da Camera, for piano trio, harp, celesta, string orchestra and percussion

Rochelle Sennet, piano

Sherban Lupu, violin

Brandon Vamos, cello

Violin Concerto (2nd mvt)

Gregory Walker, violin

Sinfonia Varsovia

Bleu

Sinfonia No 5 (Visions')

Produced by Chris Barstow for BBC Wales

The life and music of George Walker. Today, tragedy inspires Walker's last work.

Episodes

Series	Episode	Title	First Broadcast	Repeated	Comments
2020	01	Prodigy	20200106	20211025 (R3)	Donald Macleod explores the life and music of George Walker, in conversation with his son Gregory. Today, Walker looks set for a glittering career as a concert pianist. When Rosa King Walker announced to her five-year-old son George that, like it or not, he was going to have piano lessons, she can scarcely have been aware that she was dispatching him on a lifelong journey in music. Like many middle-class African-American parents of her generation, she had probably just wanted to make sure that her son was au fait with an important aspect of the dominant' culture. But things quickly escalated beyond his mother's original intentions. The boy took to the piano like a duck to water, and by his mid-teens he was off to pursue undergraduate music studies at Oberlin Conservatory in Ohio. After that came a period of post-graduate study at Philadelphia's Curtis Institute under the tutelage, among others, of the legendary Rudolf Serkin. Walker's concerto d退but came at the age of 23, when he performed one of the most challenging works in the repertoire, Rachmaninov's 3rd Piano Concerto, with the Philadelphia Orchestra, no less, under the great Eugene Ormandy. A stellar career on the concert platform surely beckoned, but in the event, things were not so straightforward. It took five years for Walker to find himself an agent, and when he finally did, he was told that it would be difficult getting bookings for a black classical pianist - a prediction which turned out, in the America of the 1950s, to be accurate. Walker had better luck in Europe, where he toured in 1953, but stress got the better of him and he developed a debilitating stomach ulcer. So gradually he began to turn his back on the idea of a solo career, gravitating instead towards a life in teaching - and, increasingly, composition. Response (Laurence Dunbar) Phyllis Bryn-Julson, soprano George Walker, piano String Quartet No 1 (1st mvt) Son Sonora String Quartet Lyric for Strings London Symphony Orchestra Paul Freeman, conductor Piano Sonata No 1 (2nd and 3rd mvts) Cello Sonata (2nd mvt) Emmanuel Feldman, cello Joy Cline-Phinney, piano Trombone Concerto Christian Lindberg, trombone Malm怀 Symphony Orchestra James DePriest, conductor Produced by Chris Barstow for BBC Wales The life and music of George Walker. Today, a glittering career as a concert pianist?
2020	02	La Boulangerie	20200107	20211026 (R3)	Donald Macleod explores the life and music of George Walker, in conversation with his son Gregory. Today Walker's Paris-bound, to study with the formidable Nadia Boulanger. `Myth`, the composer Ned Rorem once wrote in an article for the New York Times, `credits every American town with two things: a 10-cent store and a Boulanger student.` He had a point. Since the founding of the American Conservatory at the Palace of Fontainebleau, an hour or so's train journey south-east of Paris, in the aftermath of World War I, a period of study with 'Mademoiselle' had become a virtual rite of passage for aspiring young musicians from over the pond. In a career lasting nearly six decades, Nadia Boulanger taught more than 600 of them, encouraging the craft of composers as different in their outlooks as Aaron Copland, Elliott Carter, Philip Glass and Burt Bacharach. Armed with a recent doctorate from the Eastman School of Music and funded by a Fulbright Scholarship, George Walker made the pilgrimage to France in 1957, staying on for a second year courtesy of a John H Whitney Fellowship. Boulanger was, he recalled in later life, `the first person to acknowledge and praise my gift for musical composition. She never told me how to write.` Nonetheless, Walker's time with Boulanger exposed to him to the cutting edge of contemporary musical thought, and marks a watershed in the evolution of his compositional style. Inspired by an encounter with Alban Berg's Violin Concerto, Walker's solo piano piece Spatials is an engaging if perhaps somewhat self-conscious adventure in strict serialism; but in his spiky Variations for Orchestra and the dynamic Piano Concerto, his new researches have been fully assimilated into his own musical persona. The Bereaved Maid Phyllis Bryn-Julson, soprano George Walker, piano Sonata No 1 for violin and piano Gregory Walker, violin New Philharmonia Orchestra Paul Freeman, conductor Five Fancies for clarinet and piano four hands (Theme and 5 variations) Eric Thomas, clarinet Vivian Taylor, John McDonald, piano Piano Concerto (2nd mvt) Natalie Hinderas, piano Detroit Symphony Orchestra Produced by Chris Barstow for BBC Wales The life and music of George Walker. Today, Walker is Paris-bound, to study composition.
2020	03	Arrival	20200108	20211027 (R3)	Donald Macleod explores the life and music of George Walker, in conversation with his son Gregory. Today, commissions galore - including Walker's first venture into symphonic form. More than three decades after he composed his earliest acknowledged work, George Walker received his first proper commission - proper' in the sense that he was actually paid for it. He finally seemed to have arrived as a composer, and from here on in, the majority of his pieces would be commissioned. On the menu in today's programme: a brass quintet, a cantata, a piano sonata and the first of the five works Walker termed Sinfonia', to distinguish them from the tradition of the Romantic symphony. Music for Brass (Sacred and Profane) American Brass Quintet Joyce Mathis, soprano Walter Turnbull, tenor Boys Choir of Harlem Orchestra of St Luke's Warren Wilson, conductor Piano Sonata No 4 Frederick Moyer, piano Sinfonia No 1 Sinfonia Varsovia Ian Hobson, conductor Produced by Chris Barstow for BBC Wales The life and music of George Walker. Today, Walker's first venture into symphonic form.
2020	04	Lilac Time	20200109	20211028 (R3)	Donald Macleod explores the life and music of George Walker, in conversation with his son Gregory. Today, recognition at last, as Walker wins the coveted Pulitzer Prize for Music. When Walker got the phone call informing him of his epic win, the shock rendered him monosyllabic; in his autobiography, Reminiscences of an American Composer and Pianist, he recalls saying `Wow!` a lot. News soon got around - a Pulitzer was big news - and before long, there was a queue of journalists snaking down the driveway of the composer's house in Montclair, New Jersey, eager to extract a few bon mots from the great man. A Pulitzer Prize is a career-defining moment, which makes what happened next in Walker's career all the more surprising. `I got probably more publicity nationwide than perhaps any other Pulitzer Prize-winner,` he recalled in 2015. `But not a single orchestra approached me about doing the piece or any piece. It materialized in nothing.` The piece that won the prize was Lilacs, Walker's setting of verses from Walt Whitman's elegy on the death of Abraham Lincoln, When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd'. The Pulitzer Music Jury praised the `beautiful and evocative lyrical quality` of `this passionate, and very American, musical composition`. Hey Nonny No (anon) Phyllis Bryn-Julson, soprano George Walker, piano Po耀me for violin and orchestra Gregory Walker, violin Cleveland Chamber Symphony Edwin London, conductor In Time of Silver Rain Mother Goose (Circa 2054) Patricia Green, mezzo-soprano Albert Lee, tenor Sinfonia da Camera Ian Hobson, conductor Modus Cygnus Ensemble Produced by Chris Barstow for BBC Wales The life and music of George Walker. Today, he wins the coveted Pulitzer Prize for Music.
2020	05 LAST	Visions	20200110	20211029 (R3)	Donald Macleod explores the life and music of George Walker, in conversation with his son Gregory. Today, the tragedy of the Charleston church massacre inspires Walker's last work. George Walker had a tendency to play things close to his chest, even where his loved ones were concerned. Gregory Walker relates how the first time he became aware that his father had been working on a new violin concerto was when it turned up in the post one morning. Not only that, he was to give the premi耀re the following month - not with some local band, but with one of the world's great orchestras, the Philadelphia! Gregory Walker talks movingly about his father's tearful reaction to the work's first play-through; his character, by turns formal, affectionate, passionate, emotional, often angry; and about the experience of seeing him grapple with his swansong, the Sinfonia No 5, subtitled Visions', which he embarked on at the age of 93: `It was unforgettable to see someone who'd been a child prodigy, someone who had prided himself on keeping track of the most complex compositional concepts and trying to push himself beyond those complexities with each succeeding piece, reach a point where he was realising he could hardly do it anymore.` Icarus in Orbit Sinfonia da Camera Ian Hobson, conductor Piano Sonata No 5 Robert Pollock, piano Da Camera, for piano trio, harp, celesta, string orchestra and percussion Rochelle Sennet, piano Sherban Lupu, violin Brandon Vamos, cello Violin Concerto (2nd mvt) Gregory Walker, violin Sinfonia Varsovia Bleu Sinfonia No 5 (Visions') Produced by Chris Barstow for BBC Wales The life and music of George Walker. Today, tragedy inspires Walker's last work.