Pearl's two volume series of authentic Lambert is completed
with what amounts to a celebration of Lambert's love affair with the
ballet and with one particular ballerina.
Horoscope and Rio Grande are pure Lambert
whereas Apparitions and Dante Sonata are Lambert arranging
and interpreting Liszt. Liszt was the composer whose Society Lambert
helped found. In this he collaborated with fellow composer, Humphrey
Searle, the dodecaphonist, whose opera Hamlet shared its subject
with one of Liszt's symphonic poems.
There are five tracks from Horoscope (this is
not the complete ballet): 1. Dance for the followers of Leo;
2. Sarabande for the followers of Virgo; 3. Valse for the
Gemini; 4. Bacchanale; 5. Invocation to the Moon and
Finale. Horoscope has the lucidity and restraint
of Ravel (Invocation to the Moon and the Sarabande), the
snappy rhythmic interest of Walton and a foreshadowing of Bernard Herrmann's
melancholic nostalgia (2.48 track 5). Lambert is frenzied in the Bacchanale
and The Dance for the Followers of Leo and light of foot
in the voluptuous Valse with its Tchaikovskian abandon. Horoscope
with its romantic symbolism parallels similarly symbolic works by Bliss:
Colour Symphony and the ballet Checkmate.
Lambert, rather like Beecham, was a happy rummager
among dusty disowned scores. Heard influences and his BBC concert programmes
are evidence of this (have a look at Robert Shead's Lambert biography,
Thames Publishing). This magpie discoverer tendency shows up in the
Liszt-based ballets.
Liszt's works were the thematic quarry for the two
ballets Apparitions and Dante Sonata. In the case of the
former the fact that The Galop is part-Massenet and part-Shostakovich
- sardonic and yet affectionate with Hungarian Dance overtones.
The Cave Scene speaks of Lambert's love affair with the Russian
nationalist school - specifically Balakirev's Tamar, Borodin's
Prince Igor and Rimsky's Golden Cockerel. This is Liszt
arranged by Lambert and orchestrated by Gordon Jacob. The other Liszt
work is the Dante Sonata orchestrated by Lambert effectively
as a 'Concertstück' rather than a concerto. Kentner, also well
known for his early advocacy of Liszt, takes to it as if it were 'Totentanz
No. 2'. It is the oldest recording and the sound comes up, I am sorry
to say, as fresh as ... stewed tea. The piano sound fares moderately
well but there is some exuberant work for the brass section and they
are not flattered by the shattery sound. I am not clear whether this
is a problem with the originals or with the first disc of the set of
78s from which Roger Beardsley set down the digital tape. Much of the
work is listenable without pain but once the brass becomes obstreperous,
in the early part of the work, the seams begin to rip.
The disc is rounded out with the well known and still
brilliant Rio Grande in a performance that has been reissued
many times during both the LP and CD era. Kyla Greenbaum plays with
all the élan of a Martha Argerich or Joanna MacGregor. Lambert
and his fellow conspirators must have tapped into something special
that day in 1949 for this recording still has the power to draw you
in and hold you. If Gladys Ripley's vowels are now dated so what? Her
role is brief anyway and few will find this much of a drawback.
Joy would have been unbounded if Pearl had been able
to access one of the BBC transcription discs of Lambert conducting his
greyly-named but utterly vital Music for Orchestra.
Ballet formed one of the most highly charged themes
in Lambert's life. Love (Dame Margot Fonteyn was the object of his affections
and played some role in the dance presentation of all four works), music
and dance flowed effortlessly and bumped messily together. Even in works
such as Music for Orchestra (an unrecorded imperative for the
studio and in fact recorded by Lyrita Recorded Edition more than 20
years ago but still unissued - Norman del Mar and the Royal Philharmonic
Orchestra) and Summer's Last Will dance appears either furtively
or uproariously.
This balletic compilation is the natural complement
to Pearl's volume I. It will go some way to satisfy those fascinated
by Lambert the musician (witness Summer's Last Will and Testament
etc on Hyperion) and the man (for which you should refer to Andrew
Motion's study of the three Lambert generations). Pearl have done generous
service to the Lambert cause. I doubt that there is material for a volume
III.
Rob Barnett
all conducted by Constant
Lambert