Hyperion Records

William Walton, in 1932 still a young rising star of British music, contributed a ‘free arrangement’ of Bach’s early chorale Herzlich tut mich verlangen BWV727. Walton’s freedoms are nothing like as radical as Vaughan Williams’s, but they include frequent changes of register—taking the left hand to the remotest end of the piano at one spot—octave doublings, and the addition of staccato markings to some phrases. (Walton would return to this piece in 1940 and orchestrate it as the fourth movement of his ballet The Wise Virgins, which is entirely made up of Bach arrangements.)

from notes by Calum MacDonald © 2010