William Walton

William Walton came from Oldham, an industrial town in the north of England, where his father was a choirmaster. Sent south as a boy chorister to Christ Church, Oxford, he was later taken up by the literary Sitwell family, who housed him for years while he found his feet as a composer.

His breakthrough was Façade, a piece of pure 1920s mischief in which a reciter delivers Edith Sitwell's nonsense-edged poems over a jazzy little ensemble. The works that followed showed a grander side: Belshazzar's Feast, a blazing choral telling of the fall of Babylon, and a First Symphony driven by an intensity he never quite repeated. He also scored films, including Laurence Olivier's Shakespeare adaptations, and later settled on the Italian island of Ischia.

Start with the Symphony no. 1 in B flat minor, then Belshazzar's Feast with the volume up.