Previously released many moons ago in 1992 on CDA 66565, this
marvellous recording was given a glowing review
by our long-serving Classical Editor Rob Barnett in 1999. Nearly
twenty years later from the original edition and we can at last
put it on our shopping list at budget price as part of Hyperion’s
Helios label. Low cost price does not mean a low-rent release
in this case however, with Christopher Palmer’s original
notes - in English, French and German - and all of the texts
for The Rio Grande and Summer’s Last Will and
Testament printed in full in the booklet. The recording
itself still sounds a million dollars.
A feast of great music, opener The Rio Grande was Lambert’s
greatest early popular success, like Ravel’s Bolero
becoming something more of a burden than a boon over time. Influenced
by revue music and jazz rhythms from America, this work has
a theatrical sparkle which, mixed with tinges of the youthful
Delius, creates an alchemical tapestry of brilliant and still
almost overwhelmingly effective entertainment. Pianist Jack
Gibbons is noted as a Gershwin specialist in the booklet, and
his playing shines through the orchestra in complete idiomatic
sympathy with the work as a whole, from those quicksilver touches
of percussion down to the eloquence of the chorus. The central
section, where “The noisy streets are empty and hushed
is the town” is gorgeously atmospheric, building to one
of those spine-tingling climaxes which stay with you all day.
Written in the middle of World War II, Aubade Héroïque
is dedicated ‘to Ralph Vaughan Williams on his 70th
birthday’, and opens with harmonies which recall that
composer’s warm expressiveness. The piece concludes with
magical passages in a quiet major key. Its heroism is one of
distant poignancy, with never a hint of the triumphal.
Summer’s Last Will and Testament is acknowledged
by some as the Lambert’s masterpiece, and I would be the
last to disagree. Launched at an unfortunate moment in history
just days after the death of King George V and with its themes
of plague, disease and mortality, it was received poorly by
the public. It languished in oblivion for many years and is
still woefully neglected in the concert hall. This huge piece,
Lambert’s longest in any genre, divides into two main
sections. The work is based on texts by Elizabethan poet and
dramatist Thomas Nashe, to whose writings Lambert was introduced
by Philip Heseltine, better known as Peter Warlock. One of Lambert’s
closest friends, the latter’s death in 1930 was a major
motivation in the work’s creation.
It is not all doom and gloom, and the central Brawles
movement, ‘Trip and go, heave and ho!’, is one of
Lambert’s lively and dancing pieces with plenty of characteristic
syncopation. The dramatic orchestral Rondo burlesca (King
Pest) is also sometimes played separately, making a rousingly
effective programmatic concert-piece. The true heart of the
work is however in the moving restraint of movements such as
‘Fair Summer droops’ and ‘Autumn hath all
the Summer’s fruitful treasure’. The combined singers
of the Leeds Festival Chorus and Opera North are superbly controlled
in these movements, and William Shimell’s baritone in
the final funereal Saraband is very powerful. All of
this combined with the superb collective and individual playing
of the English Northern Philharmonia, make this first complete
recording of such a superb work very much its definitive standard
bearer. It’s one which would be hard to equal let alone
surpass.
It is fascinating to see how history moves on. Christopher Palmer’s
booklet notes point out the ironies of the text, and how for
some “it will be impossible to listen to Summer’s
Last Will in the 1990s without hearing it as a requiem for
the AIDS generation.” In 2012 it’s more of a ‘take
your pick’ as far as famine and disaster is concerned.
A work like this will never lose its resonance with regard to
the human condition and its often self-inflicted troubles. I
can’t conclude better than with Rob Barnett’s words
of twelve years ago: “Bereavement and loss figure eventually
in all our lives. Lambert speaks eloquently and poetically of
these experiences and in doing so leaves us with a work which
we can all take to our hearts... This is eminently accessible
and rewarding listening. The thrill of discovery awaits you.”
Dominy Clements
And Rob Barnett writes:-
Hyperion remind us that Malcolm Arnold called Summer’s
Last Will “one of the undiscovered treasures of the
English choral repertoire”. It’s certainly that
good. This first and so far only commercial recording is now
to be had for about a fiver. Fans will cherish their off-air
tapes of the 1965 Sargent broadcast. Then again they may also
have the very fine Norman Del Mar version with the BBC Concert
Orchestra, Brighton Festival Chorus and the baritone David Wilson-Johnson:
10 May 1986 at St Bartholomew’s Church, Brighton. Some
will have memories of the Sakari Oramo/CBSO performance in Symphony
Hall, Birmingham on 23 September 1999 with baritone Jeremy Huw
Williams. Performances remain pretty rare. More practically
and with poignant style this disc answers most needs and does
so with a generosity and conviction that brooks no denial.
Lambert completed Summer’s Last Will when he was
only thirty. There was no commission and he knew that the work
would struggle for performances. The premiere did not make it
a feted work. This work anyway represented the introverted occluded
persona. That said, there are outbursts of sinister jazzy dynamism
as well as the most touching melodic content paralleling Lambert’s
magnificent Music for Orchestra (review
and the 1948 Lambert broadcast on Dutton CDBP 9761). The
Rio Grande has been recorded several times commercially
but Jack Gibbons and his co-conspirators deliver a great wallop
of jazzy glitter and nostalgic yearning to contrast with the
pensive Aubade Héroïque. Like the Merchant
Seamen Suite (review
review)
it has more than a few intimations of its dedicatee Vaughan
Williams. The recording quality for all these pieces still sounds
very natural with no fatiguing chromium edginess. The insert
booklet note is by Christopher
Palmer who, some four years after writing, was to succumb
to the very mortality that is the core of Summer’s
Last Will. With the following discs Hyperion lay pretty
convincing claim to be Lambert’s alma mater: CDA67545
Romeo and Juliet etc; CDA67545 Tiresias and Pomona;
CDA66754 Mr Bear Squash You All Flat etc and CDH55099
Horoscope.
Rob Barnett
Sally Burgess (mezzo*), William Shimell (baritone**), Jack Gibbons
(piano*) 
