Clarinet Concerto in A, K.622 (with Brahms - Clarinet Quintet in B minor, Op.115)

A professional's professional, he was heir to an élite line of
clarinettists that included the founding-fathers of the modern English school, Charles Draper (1869-1952) and his nephew Haydn (1889-1934), and their two most celebrated pupils, Frederick Thurston and Reginald Kell.

Walton spent the greater part of his 35 years as a professional musician with two orchestras, the London Philharmonic and the Philharmonia. In other circumstances the position of principal clarinet of the Berlin Philharmonic might have been his for the asking. No one rated Walton's playing more highly than Herbert von Karajan. At the time of his appointment as conductor for life of the Berlin Philharmonic in 1955, he told the founder of the Philharmonia Orchestra, Walter Legge: "If we were not old friends I would immediately engage Walton for my Berlin orchestra”. After six years as the Philharmonia's principal conductor in all but name, Karajan knew at first hand that there was not a clarinettist in Europe capable of matching Walton's combination of mellifluent tone, strength and subtlety of articulation, and superlative breath-control.