Walton: The Complete Façades Hila Plitmann, Fred Child, Kevin Deas, Virginia Arts Festival Chamber Players & JoAnn Falletta

• William Walton (1902 - 1983): Façade 1, An Entertainment:
• 1Walton: Façade 1, An Entertainment: Fanfare00:39
• 2Walton: Façade 1, An Entertainment: I. Hornpipe01:18
• 3Walton: Façade 1, An Entertainment: II. En famille02:52
• 4Walton: Façade 1, An Entertainment: III. Mariner Man00:40
• 5Walton: Façade 1, An Entertainment: IV. Long Steel Grass02:09
• 6Walton: Façade 1, An Entertainment: V. Through Gilded Trellises02:10
• 7Walton: Façade 1, An Entertainment: VI. Tango-Pasodoblé01:55
• 8Walton: Façade 1, An Entertainment: VII. Lullaby for Jumbo01:23
• 9Walton: Façade 1, An Entertainment: VIII. Black Mrs. Behemoth00:54
• 10Walton: Façade 1, An Entertainment: IX. Tarantella01:22
• 11Walton: Façade 1, An Entertainment: X. The Man from a Far Countree01:35
• 12Walton: Façade 1, An Entertainment: XI. By the Lake01:41
• 13Walton: Façade 1, An Entertainment: XII. Country Dance01:56
• 14Walton: Façade 1, An Entertainment: XIII. Polka01:19
• 15Walton: Façade 1, An Entertainment: XIV. Four in the Morning02:01
• 16Walton: Façade 1, An Entertainment, XV. Something Lies Beyond the Scene01:01
• 17Walton: Façade 1, An Entertainment: XVI. Valse03:09
• 18Walton: Façade 1, An Entertainment: XVII. Jodelling Song02:14
• 19Walton: Façade 1, An Entertainment: XVIII. Scotch Rhapsody01:26
• 20Walton: Façade 1, An Entertainment: XIX. Popular Song02:00
• 21Walton: Façade 1, An Entertainment: XX. Fox-Trot "Old Sir Faulk"02:12
• 22Walton: Façade 1, An Entertainment: XXI. Sir Beelzebub01:03
• Façade 2, A Further Entertainment:
• 23Walton: Façade 2, A Further Entertainment: I. Flourish - Came the Great Popinjay01:17
• 24Walton: Façade 2, A Further Entertainment: II. Aubade03:23
• 25Walton: Façade 2, A Further Entertainment: III. March00:57
• 26Walton: Façade 2, A Further Entertainment: IV. Madame Mouse Trots00:43
• 27Walton: Façade 2, A Further Entertainment: V. The Octogenarian01:17
• 28Walton: Façade 2, A Further Entertainment: VI. Gardener Janus Catches a Naiad00:57
• 29Walton: Façade 2, A Further Entertainment: VII. Water Party01:08
• 30Walton: Façade 2, A Further Entertainment: VIII. Said King Pompey00:45
• Façade, Additional Numbers:
• 31Walton: Façade, Additional Numbers: I. Small Talk01:38
• 32Walton: Façade, Additional Numbers: II. Daphne01:44
• 33Walton: Façade, Additional Numbers: III. The White Owl01:08
• 34Walton: Façade, Additional Numbers: IV. The Last Galop01:41
• Total Runtime53:37

Info for Walton: The Complete Façades

Very few musical compositions truly deserve that overworked adjective “unique,” but it accurately applies to William Walton’s Façade.”] Or perhaps we should call this mostly-early work Façades, as it is recorded here in three parts: “Façade – An Entertainment” (21 pieces dating from 1922); “Façade 2 – A Further Entertainment” (8 more pieces; 1978-79); and the four pieces of “Façade: Additional Numbers” (1922, 1977).

These brief and colorful pieces are spoken settings of engaging, often witty, and sometimes goofy poems by Edith Sitwell, and they belong to a genre that’s all their own. The Façade pieces exist in many versions, adaptations, and revisions. The youthful Walton set the spoken poems for narrator – three speakers are featured here – over a small and colorful chamber ensemble. The poems are declaimed (in exact rhythm with the music) and not sung.

In these precisely timed performances, the narrators include operatic soprano Hila Plitmann, radio host Fred Child, and bass-baritone Kevin Deas. All are excellent, exhibiting their own personal styles but always with the words exactly aligned to the music. (Not surprisingly, the two singers – Plitmann and Deas – tend slightly toward pitched speech; Child’s narration is less attentive to the musical background but still admirably effective.) All three speakers are beautifully clear and extremely expressive; you won’t miss a syllable, no matter how speedily the music goes on “mumbling, rumbling. and tumbling” (as one of the poems puts it).

"While there have been a number of fine recordings of Façade, this one takes the blue ribbon. The combination of three superlative narrators, a spot-on musical ensemble plus JoAnn Falletta’s matchless conducting and the customary top-notch sound and packaging from Naxos makes this what I predict will be the ‘go to’ recording of the Façade music for years to come." (Raymond Jones, WHRO)

"All three speakers are beautifully clear and extremely expressive; you won’t miss a syllable, no matter how speedily the music goes on “mumbling, rumbling. and tumbling” (as one of the poems puts it).

The Façade spoken texts are nimbly accompanied here by the virtuosic Virginia Arts Festival Chamber Orchestra with the excellent JoAnn Falletta conducting. The precision of the words’ alignment with the notes is phenomenal. So is the clarity with which all the words are enunciated – or trilled, declaimed, drawled, suavely whispered, or exhorted. Each of the three performers puts a unique stamp on the respective movements, with a wide array of tonal variety and interpretive finesse. This disc represents what may well be considered the “last word” on Façade; some of the music heard here has not been previously recorded." (Melinda Bargreen, EarRelevant)

Hila Plitmann, narrator
Fred Child, narrator
Kevin Deas, narrator
Virginia Arts Festival Chamber Players
JoAnn Falletta, direction

JoAnn Falletta
Multiple Grammy Award-winning conductor JoAnn Falletta serves as Music Director of the Buffalo Philharmonic, and the Connie and Marc Jacobson Music Director Laureate of the Virginia Symphony, Principal Guest Conductor of the Brevard Music Center and Artistic Adviser to the Hawaii Symphony. She was recently named one of the “Fifty Great Conductors,” past and present, by Gramophone Magazine, and is hailed for her work as a conductor, recording artist, audience builder and champion of American composers.

Upon her appointment as Music Director of the Buffalo Philharmonic, Falletta became the first woman to lead a major American ensemble and has been credited with bringing the Philharmonic to an unprecedented level of national and international prominence. The Buffalo Philharmonic has become one of the leading recording orchestras for Naxos, with two Grammy Award-winning recordings. This season, the BPO will perform at Carnegie Hall for a centennial celebration of former BPO Music Director Lukas Foss. The orchestra will also travel to Florida for their fifth tour of the State under Falletta’s leadership.

This summer, Falletta is making her Boston Symphony Orchestra debut at Tanglewood. International highlights for 2022-23 include concerts in Spain, Sweden, Germany and Croatia. Her recent and upcoming North American guest conducting includes the National Symphony, and the orchestras of Baltimore, Detroit, Nashville, Indianapolis, Houston, Toronto, Milwaukee, and Orchestre metropolitain. Internationally, she has conducted many of the most prominent orchestras in Europe, Asia, and South America. In the past year, she has led the National Symphony in two PBS televised specials for New Year’s Eve and the 50th Anniversary of the Kennedy Center.

With a discography of over 120 titles, Falletta is a leading recording artist for Naxos. She has won two individual Grammy Awards, including the 2021 Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance as conductor of the world premiere Naxos recording, Richard Danielpour’s The Passion of Yeshua. In 2019, she won her first individual Grammy Award as conductor of the London Symphony in the Best Classical Compendium category for Spiritualist, her fifth world premiere recording of the music of Kenneth Fuchs. Her Naxos recording of John Corigliano’s Mr. Tambourine Man: Seven Poems of Bob Dylan received two Grammys in 2008. Her 2020 Naxos recording of orchestral music of Florent Schmitt with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra received the prestigious Diapason d’Or Award. Her upcoming releases for Naxos include the complete William Walton Façade, with narrators Kevin Deas, Hila Plitmann and American Public Media Host Fred Child, and the Virginia Arts Festival Chamber Players. The world premiere recording will introduce material never heard before, and mark the 100th anniversary of William Walton’s youthful masterpiece. This season will also see the Naxos release by the BPO of Scriabin’s Poem of Ecstasy and Symphony No. 2 and a world premiere recording of Adophus Hailstork’s Piano Concerto together with Danny Elfman’s Violin Concerto.

Fred Child and Falletta in the Performance Today studios, 2018 Falletta is a member of the esteemed American Academy of Arts and Sciences, has served by presidential appointment as a Member of the National Council on the Arts during the George W. Bush and Obama administrations and is the recipient of many of the most prestigious conducting awards. She has introduced over 600 works by American composers, including well over 150 world premieres. In 2019, JoAnn was named Performance Today’s first Classical Woman of The Year, calling her a “tireless champion, and lauding her “unique combination of artistic authority and compassion, compelling musicianship and humanity.”

Falletta is a strong advocate and mentor for young professional and student musicians. She has led seminars for women conductors for the League of American Orchestras and established a unique collaboration between the Buffalo Philharmonic and the Mannes College of Music to give up-and-coming conductors professional experience with a leading American orchestra. In 2018, she served on the jury of the Malko Competition in Denmark. She has had great success working with young musicians, guest conducting orchestras at top conservatories and summer programs such as the National Repertory Orchestra, National Orchestral Institute, Interlochen, and Brevard Music Center, and as Artistic Advisor at the Cleveland Institute of Music.

Falletta has held the positions of Principal Conductor of the Ulster Orchestra, Principal Guest Conductor of the Phoenix Symphony, Music Director of the Long Beach Symphony Orchestra, Associate Conductor of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, and Music Director of the Denver Chamber Orchestra and The Women’s Philharmonic.

After earning her bachelor’s degree at Mannes, Falletta received master’s and doctoral degrees from The Juilliard School. When not on the podium, JoAnn enjoys playing classical guitar, writing, cycling, yoga and is an avid reader.

Booklet for Walton: The Complete Façades