Â鶹Éç

The first performance of Façade, by William Walton and Edith Sitwell, took place on 12 June 1923 in the grand setting of London's Aeolian Hall. Unusually, the event wasn’t billed as a concert, but as an "entertainment" for six instruments and reciter. Walton, a gifted composer, was a hit with the bright young things of 1920s London. He had been all but adopted by the aristocratic Edith Sitwell and her brothers, Osbert and Sacheverell, who persuaded the reluctant Walton to set Edith’s poems to music.

On the night of the first performance, Sitwell spoke her lines through a "sengerfone", a decorated megaphone that protruded through a monstrous face painted on a screen (a staging decision that was as practical as it was dramatic; it meant that she could be heard above the instruments). The music itself was a fizzing mix of sophisticated jazzy modernism and music hall parody, with masses of quotations thrown in.

Evelyn Waugh and Virginia Woolf were among the first dazed audience members, while Noel Coward was so disgusted that he walked out in the middle. The reviews were mixed. While one headline denounced Façade as "drivel that they paid to hear", a more thoughtful critic wrote:"As a musical joker, [Walton] is a jewel of the first water’.

This is one of 100 significant musical moments explored by Â鶹Éç Radio 3’s Essential Classics as part of Our Classical Century, a Â鶹Éç season celebrating a momentous 100 years in music from 1918 to 2018. Visit bbc.co.uk/ourclassicalcentury to watch and listen to all programmes in the season.

This Â鶹Éç archive recording is by the Â鶹Éç Symphony Orchestra with conductor Sakari Oramo.

Show less