A neglected work from Wales: uncovering Grace Williams’s Violin Concerto

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If you were asked to name a Welsh composer who had written a violin concerto, whose name would come to mind? You wouldn’t be alone if you blanked on an answer.

Shining a light on a Welsh violin concerto is London-based violinist Madeleine Mitchell, who will be performing the music of Grace Williams on 9 November in Wrexham, Wales.

Williams (1906–1977) is widely regarded as Wales’s most significant female composer but whose music has been long overlooked. She was born in Barry, near Cardiff, and won a scholarship to study at Cardiff University in 1923.

Three years later, she was accepted to study at the Royal College of Music in London with Ralph Vaughan Williams, counting Benjamin Britten as a close friend.

Few of Williams’s pieces have been published or recorded. Mitchell came across the manuscript of the Williams’s Violin Sonata after a meeting with former BBC Radio 3 producer Gwyn L. Williams.

On the cover of the manuscript, the self-critical Williams had written ’first and third movements not good enough, second movement worth performing,’ which piqued Mitchell’s interest and spurred her into researching, recording and performing the works of Williams. She took it to the First International Conference of Women’s Work in Music in Bangor in 2017, to positive reception.

Throught the National LIbrary of Wales, Mitchell then discovered plenty of Williams’s chamber music, which was unpublished and unrecorded. This led to an album of Williams’s chamber music being recorded with the London Chamber Ensemble for Naxos in association with the British Music Society.

An appearance BBC Radio 4 Women’s Hour initiated an invitation from Meurig Bowen, the then-director of BBC National Orchestra of Wales, to perform the Violin Concerto with the orchestra.

Now, Mitchell will bring this ‘unjustly neglected’ work to audiences in Wrexham in a performance with the Wrexham Symphony Orchestra and conductor Bedwyn Lloyd Phillips.

’Being half Welsh myself I identify strongly with this very fine composer and her temperament, who for years was overlooked and overshadowed by her close friend Britten,’ Mitchell told The Strad. 

What can audiences expect from the violin concerto? ’What’s interesting is that Grace Williams’s favourite instrument was really the trumpet even though she played the violin, and she uses a large orchestra including full brass with three trombones and harp in her concerto,’ says Mitchell.

The second movement utilises an extensive oboe solo around which the violinist weaves a beautiful line, much like in the concertos by Brahms and Barber.

’I feel that the first movement - Liricamente - starts quite dreamily, almost evoking Welsh landscape and is lyrical but it’s also very virtuosic with demanding cadenzas in both the first and third movements. The last movement is lively and spirited with some sardonic wit as well as lyricism and exciting writing.’

In terms of stylistic influences, Mitchell mentions Williams’ teacher at RCM Vaughan Williams, who recommended her for a travelling scholarship to Vienna to study with Egon Wellecz in 1930. ’She was more thrilled to hear Richard Strauss than Schoenberg and I think relished the big orchestral sound,’ says Mitchell.

Madeleine Mitchell performs Grace Williams’s Violin Concerto with Wrexham Symphony Orchestra and Bedwyn Lloyd Phillips at 2:30pm on Sunday 9 November, at William Aston Hall in Wrexham.