When Australian composer Malcolm Williamson was appointed Master of The Queen's Music in 1975, William Walton was said to have remarked that the wrong Malcolm had been chosen - the other Malcolm being Malcolm Arnold. Williamson's appointment to that peculiarly British post in the Royal Household was notable as he was the first (and currently only) non-Briton to hold that position. Not that the post hadn't had controversial appointments before. Arnold Bax was steeped in Irish culture and nationalism which by definition was against British rule in Ireland.
Williamson often had problems with deadlines for commissions - the most public being his failure to complete a Jubilee Symphony for the 1977 Silver Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth. However one commission that was delivered on time was this one, written for the BBC's then new classical radio station Radio 3 in 1965. Often ballet music is arranged into orchestral suites, but in this work - the Sinfonietta for Orchestra - the reverse occurred: a ballet was created from the score by Frederick Ashton for the Royal Ballet in 1967, to which end Williamson wrote a short prelude to precede the first movement. This is the version that RCA released in a recording published in 1971 by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra under Yuval Zaliouk. (The sleeve notes suggest the revision was done in 1975, but that would have been four years after this recording of it was published. This page gives Ashton's choreography a date of 1967.)
Cartridge: Soundsmith Zephyr MIMC ☆
Phono amp: Graham Slee Accession MC
Turntable: CTC Classic 301 with SME M2-12R
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