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Home , Constant Lambert, Norman Del Mar

SRCD.215 STEREO †DDD ADD

CONSTANT LAMBERT (1905-1951) Romeo and Juliet (30’00”) Pomona (20’36”) Pomona A Ballet in two Tableaux (1924-5) A Ballet in one Act (1926) First Tableau 14 1 Prelude (4’07”) Music for Orchestra 1 1 Rondino (2’06”) 15 2 Corante (2’59”) 2 2 Gavotte & Trio (2’08”) 16 3 Pastorale (2’41”) 3 3 Scherzino (1’42”) 17 4 Menuetto (2’24”) Romeo & Juliet 4 4 Siciliana (2’54”) 18 5 Passacaglia (1’53”) 5 5 Sonatina (2’33”) 19 6 Rigadoon (0’59”) King Pest Second Tableau 20 7 Siciliana (3’39”) ‘Rondo Burlesca’ 6 1 Entracte (1’39”) 21 8 Marcia (1’54”) 7 2 Sinfonia (2’54”) 8 3 Alla Marcia (1’51”) Music for Orchestra (1927) †* (13’19”) 9 4 Toccata (2’31”) 22 1st movement: Andante (5’31”) 10 5 Musette (2’51”) 23 - 2 nd movement: Risoluto – Vivace (7’48”) 11 6 Burlesca (1’29”) 12 7 Adagietto (1’59”) 24 King Pest: Rondo Burlesca †** (9’14”) 13 8 Finale (3’23” ) (Vivace ma misterioso) (73’14”) English Chamber Orchestra conducted by Norman Del Mar * Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by ** Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Simon Joly English Chamber Orchestra • Del Mar The above individual timings will normally each include two pauses. One before the beginning of each movement or work, and one after the end. ൿ 1979 * ** ൿ 2007 The copyright in these sound recordings is owned by Lyrita Recorded Edition, England Royal Philharmonic This compilation and digital remastering ൿ 2007 Lyrita Recorded Edition, England © 2007 Lyrita Recorded Edition, England. Made in the UK Orchestra • Joly LYRITA RECORDED EDITION. Produced under an exclusive license from Lyrita by Wyastone Estate Ltd, PO Box 87, Monmouth, NP25 3WX, UK London Philharmonic Orchestra • Wordsworth eonard Constant Lambert was born in London in 1905 and died there in 1951, L two days before his forty-sixth birthday. His musical career spanned twenty-five years. It began and ended amid balletic controversies of great bitterness. He liked to call himself a francophil English composer-conductor born to an Australian painter from St Petersburg. This description, seemingly fanciful, was accurate.The Lambert family came originally fromYorkshire,but George, Constant’s father, was born in Russia, emigrated to Australia, and came back to England in 1900. He was a well-known painter. Maurice, Constant’s elder brother, was a talented sculptor. Constant Lambert was a man of outstandingly wide cultural range, a man as well-informed about painting and literature as about music. For this reason his contribution to the development of what is now proved invaluable. A triumvirate composed of , and Lambert founded the company, then called the Vic-Wells Ballet, in 1931, and Lambert was its Musical Director and principal conductor for sixteen years. He resigned in 1947, but soon returned as Artistic Director and guest conductor. He also enjoyed a distinguished www.lyrita.co.uk career as a conductor in the concert hall. His output as a composer was Notes © 1979 & 2007 Lyrita Recorded Edition, England comparatively small— just over twenty mature works—but almost always of high calibre. His best known piece is still , which was received with great Cover: Christopher Wood’s 1926 portrait of Constant Lambert is reproduced by public and critical acclaim at its first concert performances in 1929 and has remained permission of The National Portrait Gallery, London. Photograph of the composer from the Lewis Foreman collection. Based on an original design by Keith Hensby. consistently popular ever since. Lambert was renowned for his wit, displayed for the most part in conversation and ephemeral writing, but seen at its best in his one book, The recordings of Pomona and Romeo & Juliet were made in association with the Music Ho!, published in 1934, and one of the most entertaining, perceptive and still BRITISH COUNCIL. controversial books on music in the English language. Pomona, Romeo & Juliet He died sadly early from a combination of disappointment, overwork, ill-health, Rec ording location and date: July 1977, Kingsway Hall, London. undiagnosed diabetes and drink. His last ballet, , was savaged by many critics. Recording Producer: James Walker The controversy over it was raging when he died and continued to rage after his Recording Engineer: Stanley Goodall death, with Edith and Osbert Sitwell leaping in typical fashion to the defence of their Digital Remastering Engineer: Simon Gibson dead friend. Romeo and Juliet was one of only two ballets by English com posers produced by WARNING Copyright subsists in all Lyrita Recordings. Any unauthorised broadcasting. public the Diaghilev Company, the other being The Triumph of Neptune, by Lambert’s performance, copying, rental or re-recording thereof in any manner whatsoever will constitute an infringement of such copyright. In the licences for the use of recordings for public friend . Lambert was introduced to Diaghilev in 1925 and played him his performance may be obtained from Phonographic Performance Ltd., 1 Upper James Street, London, W1F 9DE 2 7 remember Lambert characterised as “romantic”, ritualising its pent-up emotion, and ‘suite dansée’ Adam and Eve. The Russian liked the piece but not its scenario. He in its concluding quick music anticipates the angular counterpoint of the British agreed to produce it, but as Romeo and Juliet, a typically ‘English’ subject, as he symphonists of the 1940s and early 50s. quaintly put it. Lam bert then revised the score, removing a passacaglia and com- posing a new finale. At this stage the ballet was conceived as a straight retelling of the King Pest: Rondo Burlesca is the sixth movement of Lambert’s Summer’s Last Romeo and Juliet story, with choreo graphy by and sets and Will and Testament, setting words by Lambert called it a ‘Masque’ for costumes by Lam bert’s friend, the young painter Christopher Wood. baritone, chorus and orchestra. The title is a punning reference to Henry VIII’s jester, By the time Lambert—on leave from the , where he was Will Somers. While the work seems to concern itself with the seasons, its actual still a student—arrived at the Diaghilev headquarters at Monte Carlo, things had subject is the ever-present danger of plague in Elizabethan London. changed, and not for the better. Romeo and Juliet was being turned into what was There are seven sections of which two are orchestral. The orchestral Rondo then known as a ‘cocktail ballet’, the very incongruity between its component parts Burlesca ‘King Pest’ took its title from Edgar Allen Poe’s story of that name telling of intended as part of its charm. The ballet was to be about a company ‘rehearsing’ Plague-ridden London, but Lambert’s imagery is from Nashe’s much more Romeo and Juliet, and the designs, such as they were, had now been entrusted to the contemporary The Unfortunate Traveller. This remarkable and extended orchestral two surrealists Max Ernst and Joan Miró. Nijinska had finished her work and gone off scherzo, a real dance macabre, is possibly even more striking when played as an to Buenos Aires, where she had been offered a post at the Colón Theatre, and independent work than when heard in situ. Exciting throughout, the cumulative Diaghilev was tinker ing with the choreography. Lambert was so incensed by these build-up and the driving triplet rhythms allow little respite, until its muted expiry at developments that he tried to withdraw his music. There were disagreeable scenes the end. At a climactic point the orchestra, very loud, blare out a quotation from an with Diaghilev, who eventually put the orchestral parts under police guard lest the obscure sea-shanty ‘Walk him along, Johnny’, included because the words at that composer should try to take them away. One cannot but admire the strength of mind point are ‘Carry him to the burying ground’. displayed by an unknown English music student in taking on the dictator of the Lambert wrote Summer’s Last Will and Testament between the summer of 1932 Russian Ballet. and the winter of 1935. It was first performed by BBC forces at Queen’s Hall However, the ballet was first performed as Diaghilev wanted it on 4 May 1926, conducted by Lambert himself on 29 January 1936. Lambert started the practice of with a cast headed by Karsavina and Lifar and containing Sokolova, Woizikovsky, playing King Pest separately, first heard thus during the 1936 and 1937 Proms and Danilova and Markova. The first night in Monte Carlo passed well enough, but when later in his Third Programme Concert on 16 January 1947, and, predictably, perhaps, the ballet reached Paris on 18 May, with Nikitina replacing Karsavina and Roger it was also included in the BBC’s first memorial concert for him after his premature Desormière in the pit, there was a positive riot in the theatre. This had nothing to do death, on 29 January 1952. with the music: the demonstration was organised by the surrealists, headed by LEWIS FOREMAN Aragon and André Breton, incensed because two of their number— Ernst and Miró— had worked for the ‘capitalist’ Diaghilev. ‘All Paris will flock to see the ballet that caused a riot’, wrote an English newspaper, and all Paris did. Diaghilev was delighted: it was not a scandale on the scale of those aroused by Le Sacre du Printemps and L’Après-midi d’un Faune, but excellent publicity nonetheless.

6 3 The first tableau takes place at a ballet class. The maître de ballet teaches the two Vertumnus, god of the seasons, gardens and orchards, appears with his followers. principals a pas de deux, during which they become a shade over-affectionate and They make advances to Pomona and her nymphs, who run away. Vertumnus and his have to be sep arated. In the second tableau scenes from Romeo and Juliet are being followers depart. In the Pastorale Pomona returns and dances timidly. She is joined rehearsed. The action follows the usual story in out line, but at the end the lovers don by the nymphs (Menuetto). Vertumnus’ followers return. In the Passacaglia the god flying kit and elope by aeroplane. himself comes back, disguised as a woman no longer young, and tries, successfully, to The music is written in a series of short numbers, very much in the neoclassic comfort and encourage Pomona. They leave together. A Rigadoon for nymphs and manner fashionable at the time. The influence of Stravinsky is strong, as is that of immortals is followed by the aforementioned Siciliana, a pas de deux for Pomona Domenico Scarlatti. But there are also the first traces of Lambert’s own personality, and Vertumnus. The final joyous Marcia celebrates the wedding of the god and notably in the triumphant and vivacious finale written specially for the Diaghilev goddess. production. No less an authority than André Messager wrote of the ballet as being full RICHARD SHEAD of promise. By contrast Pomona had an untroubled history. It was originally written as a Divertimento but performed only once in this form, at the Chelsea Music Club on 16 Dedicated to the composer Lord Berners, Music for Orchestra was written soon after November 1926. Thomas McGreevy, an Irish poet and friend of Yeats, suggested to Lambert was a counterpoint student of R O Morris at the RCM and dates from 1927. Lambert that the Divertimento might be suitable for a ballet based on the legend of First performed by the BBC Wireless Orchestra conducted by Leslie Heward on 14 Pomona and Ver tumnus. Lambert agreed, and, with the addition of the passacaglia June 1929, though Lambert always suggested it was first programmed by Diaghilev, removed from Adam and Eve, the Divertimento became Pomona. The ballet was first who indeed played it as a symphonic interlude during his last London season in 1929. performed at the Colón Theatre at Buenos Aires on 9 September 1927, with It was heard at at Queen’s Hall on 29 August that year. It was chosen as choreography by Nijinska. The BBC broadcast the music in 1929 and there was a one of the British representative works for the ISCM Festival in 1931, at Oxford and concert performance in London in early 1930, but the first staged performance in London, and was heard at Queen’s Hall on 27 July 1931 when Lambert himself England was on 19 October 1930, at the opening night of the newly-formed Camargo conducted. Society at the newly-opened Cambridge Theatre. There was new choreo graphy by Lambert was keen to emphasise the music had no programme, but for the ISCM Ashton and the designs were by the surrealist John Banting. Anton Dolin danced programme note the annotator remarked. ‘Although the title Music for Orchestra Vertumnus, the American dan cer Anna Ludmila took the part of Pomona. The ballet might suggest that this is a piece of ‘abstract music’, the composer would like it known was an immediate success. that he does not believe in the existence of any such thing.’ In the programme for the Pomona marks a great advance on Romeo. There are still af finities with the Promenade Concert he had said that he did not: ‘intend that it should be listened to French school of the 1920s: neoclassicism, clean, economical scoring, and occasional quite as “absolute music”, and certainly not in any sense as academic’. There are two harmonic astringency. But the music is far more lyrical and is clearly the product of interlinked movements: a slow introduction with two romantic themes and a vigorous a defined and integrated musical personality. In particular the Siciliana, for which and more severe allegro in fugal style. At the end of the allegro comes a coda in which Lambert had a special affection, shows him at his most characteristic. the themes of both movements are combined in a broad climax for full orchestra When the curtain rises (Prelude), Pomona, goddess of fruits, is discovered with It surely looks forward to his masterpiece Summer’s Last Will and Testament her nymphs in an orchard near Rome. To the sound of hunting horns (Corante), with its opening spare bitter-sweet high entwining string lines, which we should

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