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Walton and Sitwell’s Facade

Walton and Sitwell’s Facade

Price: $15.00

Code: AMC029

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William Walton and Edith Sitwell developed the idea for Facade in the early 1920's, wherein Sitwell's poems would be recited against Walton's coordinated but independent musical score. The poems referenced all aspects of life in turn-of-the-century England, and so Walton, influenced by Mozart, Beethoven, Weber, Schoenberg and Stravinsky, composed corresponding musical miniatures in a 1920's style that roamed through Stravinsky, jazz, Satie, polkas, tarantellas, waltzes, hornpipes, fanfares, tangos and Swiss yodelling songs. Judged scandalous and crazy upon its debut, Facade gained popularity over time, and a second book, Facade 2: A Further Entertainment, was compiled in the 1970's. This recording also includes other Sitwell poems, recited again by Lynn Redgrave.

"With Lynn Redgrave an excellent reciter of the Edith Sitwell poems..., the ensemble from Lincoln Center under Joseph Silverstein... give a virtuoso performance of the quirky score, both crisply disciplined and idiomatic. Far more than usual, the recording gets the balance right between voice and instruments. Words are splendidly clear yet with no unnatural highlighting of the reciter, set naturally against the unaccompaniment in an aptly intimate acoustic."

- Gramophone

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