Walton: Belshazzar’s Feast, Symphony No 1

Belshazzar’s Feast originated in 1929 with a BBC commission for a small-scale choral work. Walton accepted, and turned to Osbert Sitwell for a libretto, but found that his material quickly outgrew his original conception. We should not overlook the essential part played by Osbert Sitwell in the success of Belshazzar, for in working the Biblical words into a compact and vivid libretto, he removed it from the world of extended and wordy Victorian settings of the same story and encapsulated the dramatic images of the story in a form that allowed Walton’s emergent genius a canvas on which it could work. Indeed Walton’s tight control of his material is underlined by his remark that he regarded the work less as an oratorio than a three-movement choral symphony.