DAVID LYON Horn Concerto, Fairytale Suite and
other orchestral music.
Michael Thompson (French horn),
Royal Ballet Sinfonia/David Lloyd-Jones
Marco Polo 8.225839
David Lyon, born in 1938, is not widely known as a composer, that is until
this splendidly played and recorded and well presented disc. It appears in
Marco Polo's British Light Music series, but not all the music is really
light. The Horn Concerto, commissioned for the Milton Keynes Festival in
1977, is eclectic and tuneful certainly, but not truly light, nor perhaps
is the Ballet for Orchestra with its spiky orchestration reminiscent
perhaps of Malcolm Arnold but to me more of Stravinsky and having something
of the latter's arresting and astringent qualities. For the rest there are
two suites which recycle music originally written for young children - the
Farnham Suite for strings and the sensitively scored Fairytale
Suite (the fairy tale is the 'Snow Queen'), a Fantasia on a Nursery
Song ('Nick Nack Paddy Wack') which is an amusing set of variations,
each in the style of a particular composer, the vigorous sparklingly witty
Overture to a Comic Opera, very much in the tradition of the British
light comedy overture and two miniatures, the pleasantly jogging Country
Lanes and Waltz for strings, whose innocuous tunefulness masks
subtle rhythmic complexities.
So the listener has a varied picture of Lyon's output. It is good to be reminded
that much enjoyable light music was still being written in the seventies
and eighties despite all the difficulties in finding performances for it.
Let us encourage him (and his fellow composers) by investing in this attractive
CD.
Reviewer
Philip L Scowcroft
