Walton: Henry V - A Musical Scenario after Shakespeare (complied by Christopher Palmer)

1. how you come across to it:
It was performed in the HKPO concert last night.
It is originally from the music for the film directed by Laurence Olivier in 1944.

2. why this piece?
Splendid orchestral painting, and modern rendition of English Renaissance melodies which Walton quoted.

3. (and...)
"Both Sir Malcolm Sargent (in 1945) and the man who originally conducted the music on the film’s sound track, Muir Mathieson (in 1963), made concert suites from Walton’s complete score. However, in 1988 the Canadian music scholar, Christopher Palmer, one of the leading authorities on British music during the 20th century and a close friend of Walton, went one step further and, as he put it, “restructured the Henry V score as a piece for speaker, orchestra and chorus”. He incorporated “about 90 percent of the complete music. A few small or fragmentary sections refused to fit in, and some cuts had to be made in the battle music”. - notes by HKPO