William Walton's Improvisations on an Impromptu of Benjamin Britten took its initial musical inspiration from a 1946 impromptu that Benjamin Britten retrofitted to his Piano Concerto No. 1 from 1938. Walton's excursion on this idea, which spans four movements and around 16 minutes, was commissioned by Dr. Ralph Dorman in memory of his wife and premiered in 1970 by the San Francisco Symphony. The work stands as a monument to the composer's technical control and expressive maturity, as well as to his wealth of creativity in melody, texture, and orchestration. It fills a unique niche within his œuvre. It is much starker and more focused than his output as a whole, and its lines deliver their expressive content by means of broad planes and sharp angles, rather than endlessly varying curves and juxtapositions. An emphasis on the development of a few central motivic ideas draws attention away from tunefulness, while a drastically scaled-down and carefully executed accompaniment texture places melodic design in the spotlight. Walton's orchestration tricks are distributed conservatively, making their appearances within this much more transparent sonic environment even more dramatic.

The first movement, "Lento," is dominated by single lines, sometimes colored with added instruments, as when the last note of a unison passage in the strings is punctuated by the glockenspiel or when pizzicato arpeggios bubble up mysteriously at the end of a phrase. A continual melodic emphasis on the half step lends the movement an ever-present sense of tension. Even when the imitative exchanges become more harmonically tense and orchestrationally involved in the second movement (Vivo), clear, deliberate lines still predominate, which is a bit unexpected from a composer who often overwhelms with endless melodic and textural variety. Walton is much more straightforward here in his expressive delivery than listeners may be accustomed to. Nonetheless, the concise drama found in the Improvisations on an Impromptu suggests that he does just as well when his lines are exposed as when they are characteristically hidden in crowds. The "Moderato" third movement places a greater emphasis on texture and color, with incessantly pulsing dissonant chords underscoring the arcing leaps and swells outlined by the strings. One melodic passage consists almost entirely of simple triadic arpeggios, against such a disorienting harmonic background as to seemingly alter their inherent character and render them awkwardly and inexplicably dissonant. The fourth movement, "Scherzando," begins with a shriek in the strings, executing eerie grace note glissandos that leap like embers into the upper ranges before being extinguished. Again, a single prominent line predominates, from which accompaniment accouterments seem to diverge in quasi-imitative gestures or derivative counterpoint. The jerky dotted rhythms near the end stumble along to the cumbersome cadence of the snare drum before arriving at the resolute iterations of the final note.

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