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Constant LAMBERT (1905-1951) Romeo and Juliet - A Ballet in two Tableaux (1924-25) [30:00] Pomona - A Ballet in one Act (1926) [20:36] Music for Orchestra * (1927) [13:19] King Pest: Rondo Burlesca ** (1935) [9:14]
English
Chamber Orchestra/Norman Del Mar
London Philharmonic Orchestra/Barry Wordsworth *
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra/Simon Joly **
rec. DDD*; July 1977, Kingsway Hall, London, ADD LYRITA
SRCD.215 [73:14]
This
is a useful collection and presents the first modern recording
of Music for Orchestra. This
well packed CD has been compiled in part from the contents
of a late-1970s Lyrita LP (the two ballets). In addition
there are two much later recordings which for many years
have lain unissued in the Lyrita vaults. The major newcomer
is a work for which I have the keenest affection - touching
and regal, jazzy and emotional and yet its ‘battleship grey’ title
leaves us with little temptation to explore. It's our loss.
More of that before long.
Norman
Del Mar superbly puts across the tumult of excitable syncopation
you find in Lambert’s scores as well as their wistful yet
ecstatic poetry. It is hardly surprising that part of the
packaging for these ballet works recalls the neo-classical
Stravinsky yet within Lambert’s range there is more vulnerability
and sheer heart than the Russian composer could manage. Tangy
harmonic clashes were also part of his armoury. We hear this
in the Toccata of Romeo and Juliet but Lambert
was not too proud to adopt the Vaughan Williams pastoral
manner. The calming and slightly chilly Musette is
inventively done with the bereft voices of woodwind chiming
appreciatively around a winsome solo violin line. The smiling Pomona is
also from his fecund twenties and its most yielding episode,
among much that is gentle, is the Siciliana. Those
agreeably grating clashes are heard again in the rousing Marcia but
overall Pomona is a lower key work than Romeo and
Juliet.
Del
Mar knew his stuff and in the 1980s conducted several Lambert
works for broadcast by the BBC. On 10 May 1986 at the Brighton
Festival he directed a rare performance of Summer’s Last
Will and Testament with David Wilson-Johnson (baritone),
the Brighton Festival Singers and the BBC Concert Orchestra.
He had also championed Music for Orchestra with the
RPO broadcast on 1 March 1982. The neglect of this drably
titled work is grievous and it is good to be able to welcome
it here as recorded not by Del Mar but by Barry Wordsworth
with the LPO. It is well done although at 13:19 it seems
a bit quick by comparison with broadcasts by Handford and
Del Mar; not that I have timed them. Music for Orchestra is
one of those works that seems to speak with poetry and without
bombast from a confident heart. The grunt of the bass drum
thud that separates the long-lined melody that opens the
work from the fugal section is superbly rendered. The fugal
manner is mixed in with Lambert’s trademark euphoric syncopation
which rises to another even more exalted level at 2:02 in
tr. 23. All sorts of signatures are there to enjoy including
the tambourine and castanets associated with the Rio Grande of
the same year. When he counterpoints the rhythmic motif with
the endlessly strong melody of the opening bars (shades of ‘Don’t
throw bouquets at me’) the result is majestic yet deeply
touching and symphonically impressive. The grandeur of this
score might occasionally recall a voluptuous transcription
of Bach but it works magnificently. This is amongst my favourite
works and I recommend it very strongly indeed. Symphonic
fibre woven with syncopation and poetry.
King
Pest – Rondo Burlesca is the
purely orchestral sixth movement from his magnum opus about
the transience of life: Summer’s Last Will and Testament.
The whole thing can be heard in David Lloyd Jones’s version
on an indispensable Hyperion. Incidentally that work starts
with a theme and treatment remarkably close to the wistful
melody used so resourcefully in Music for Orchestra.
A jerky macabre episode playfully mixes shivering reflections
of the Dies Irae with a determined and unsmiling
rhythmic material. This is a work that sometimes looks
towards the Witches Sabbath in Berlioz’s Symphonie
Fantastique. It manages to be both forbidding and gleefully
playful – the guest at Poe’s ‘Masque of the Red Death’.
This
is then a magnificent Constant Lambert collection which is
required listening for anyone seeking music of emotional
moment from the 1920s and 1930s.
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