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Constant LAMBERT (1905-1951) Romeo and Juliet - A Ballet in two Tableaux (1924-26) [30:00] Pomona - A Ballet in one Act (1926-27) [20:36] Music for Orchestra (1927)[13:19] * King Pest: Rondo Burlesca (1932-35) [9:14]
**
English
Chamber Orchestra/Norman Del Mar
London Philharmonic Orchestra/Barry Wordsworth *
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra/Simon Joly **
rec. July 1977, Kingsway Hall, London (Romeo and Juliet, Pomona);
unspecified (Music for Orchestra, King Pest). DDD*; ADD. Notes
in English LYRITA SRCD215 [73:14]
Constant Lambert’s Pomona has
fared well on CD. It received two recordings made within
four months of each other in 1998: David Lloyd-Jones’s account
on Hyperion with the English Northern Philharmonia and Barry
Wordsworth’s BBC Concert Orchestra recording on ASV. A year
later John Lanchbery recorded it (and Romeo and Juliet)
with the State Orchestra of Victoria for Chandos. All three
versions are beautifully and idiomatically played and enjoy
superlative recordings.
Norman Del Mar’s pioneering
recording comes from more than twenty years earlier and makes
a welcome return to the catalogue with the overdue resurrection
of the Lyrita label. Lambert’s was a prodigious talent and
in 1926 Pomona was already his fifth ballet score.
Its commission came hot on the heels of Romeo and Juliet,
for which he received the commission when still only twenty.
The relationship with Diaghilev had not been an easy one
but Bronislava Nijinska, who had choreographed Romeo and
Juliet, recognised Lambert’s gift and asked him for a
ballet for a performance at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires
on 9 September 1927. Pomona started life as a Divertimento,
which itself had grown out of a little movement called Champêtre.
This movement became the opening Intrata, while the
remainder of the existing Divertimento was augmented
by the Passacaglia from the earlier ‘suite dansée’ Adam
and Eve. The movements were then re-ordered into the
form we hear on this disc. The music has a marked neo-classical
flavour with Stravinsky (Pulcinella), Poulenc (Les
biches) and even a splash of Milhaud being brought to
mind and, as a whole, reveals Lambert’s interest in French
music at the time. Only the Passacaglia and Marcia sound
vaguely English - à la Finzi and Walton/Bliss respectively.
In 1925 Lambert had received
that aforementioned commission from Diaghilev for a ballet
for his company. They had agreed that Lambert’s third balletic
score, Adam and Eve, would form the basis of the new Romeo
and Juliet ballet. Lambert excised the Passacaglia which
found its way into Pomona and added a new finale.
The main cause of friction between Lambert and Diaghilev
was the impresario’s wish to turn Romeo and Juliet into
a fashionable ‘cocktail ballet’ where the incongruity between
subject matter and its treatment was considered part of the
charm of the form. Lambert ultimately lost his battle and
the ballet was premièred on 4 May 1926. The music of Romeo
and Juliet is sharper and zestier than that for Pomona and
makes for entertaining and rewarding listening for its own
sake – especially when as infectiously performed as it is
here.
The English Chamber Orchestra
performs energetically but I occasionally wished the engineers
hadn’t compensated for the lack of orchestral size with a
slightly close recording. I find the more spacious recordings
of the later versions of these ballets more pleasing on the
ear.
Of special interest on
this disc are the two pieces appearing on Lyrita for the
first time are Music for Orchestra and the Rondo
Burlesca, King Pest. Dedicated to his friend and
colleague Lord Berners, the Music for Orchestra dates
from the same period as Pomona. The Andante contains
some beautifully hushed writing … and playing!, while the
second movement starts with a fugue. I was occasionally reminded
of Walton – particularly at 1:43 in track 23. It is hard
to believe that Lambert intended these colourful and well-crafted
movements as purely ‘abstract’ music – accounting, no doubt,
for the rather unimaginative title. This is very Romantic
music and far removed from the neo-classicism of the two
ballets heard earlier on the disc. Both pieces are moulded
with great skill by Barry Wordsworth and the London Philharmonic
Orchestra with very fine recording to match.
The Rondo Burlesca:
King Pest is the sixth of the seven movements that
comprise the work many people hold up as Lambert’s masterpiece Summer’s
Last Will and Testament, written 1932-35. This is a
scherzo-like movement and to, my ears, a sort of danse
macabre, full of mischief, menace and barbed humour
in equal measure. The closing bars remind me just a little
of the conclusion of Holst’s Uranus from The
Planets. Simon Joly and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
are treated to a sumptuous and transparent recording with
a very natural balance and presence.
This collection shows
why Lambert was one of the most promising and accomplished
composers of the first half of the twentieth century, making
his early death all the more regrettable.
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