Cat No. JM71218
Price £85.00
Composer: William Walton
Arranger: Paul Hindmarsh
Transcribed: Christopher Palmer
Category: LIGHT CONCERT MUSIC

During the Second World War William Walton provided music for films deemed to be of 'national importance'. Lawrence Olivier's Shakespeare epic Henry V in 1943 was the most substantial. His role in patriotic films from 1941 and 42 like The Foreman went to France, Next of Kin, Went the day Well and The First of the Few was to provide appropriate title music and some underscoring at key moments. Walton extracted the most substantial portions of the latter as the popular Spitfire Prelude and Fugue for orchestra. The remaining music remained unpublished until 1990, when Christopher Palmer assembled the highlights into A Wartime Sketchbook.

This brass band arrangement was produced between 1990 and1992 for Besses o' th' Barn Band and subsequently recorded by Black Dyke Mills Band as part of an award-winning all Walton CD (ASV CD WHL 2093).


01. Prologue: The stirring title music from Went the day Well, a screen play by Graham Greene about a German airborne invasion of an English village.
02. Bicycle Chase: Characteristic musical high-jinks for J.B.Priestley's The Foreman went to France.
03. Refugees: From the same film, this is a poignant accompaniment to the long march of refugees.
04. Young Siegfrieds: This lively movement comes from the music that Walton composed for The Battle of Britain in 1968. portraying first the Berliners, cheerfully ignoring the black-out and then, in the trio, the Young Siegfrieds of the Luftwaffe, courtesy of a parody of Siegfried's horn call from Wagner's opera.
05. Romance: A soldier and a Dutch refugee snatch a few tender moments together in Next of Kin.
06. Epilogue: At the end of The Foreman went to France, the French look forward with hope and optimism to eventual liberation.

Duration: 14 mins  (Romance: 3 mins; Young Seigfrieds 4 mins)