No one puts a foot
wrong here. The programme may not plumb
great depths but Lambert’s muse was
always wide-anging, not least in his
ballets, and this disc gives us two
such interspersed with the early Concerto,
his homage to Florence Mills, and the
overture The Bird Actors.
Hyperion has had the
enlightened idea to secure the services
of Jonathan Plowright for the Concerto
and David Lloyd-Jones reprises his Lambert
credentials once more for the company.
Romeo and Juliet
is a delectable score written for
Diaghilev between 1924 and 1925, that’s
to say between Lambert’s nineteenth
and twentieth birthdays. Those plucky,
puckish Francophile winds in the Siciliana
show off his stylistic affinities as
does the fugato and Stravinskian hints
of the Sonatina (both of these from
the First Tableau), enlivened as it
is by the rhythmic bite of the brass.
The Sinfonia is a bold, colourful march,
the duel scene a Toccata of unremitting
energy and dramatic tension, superbly
scored, and the Burlesca a cool unwinding
wind line that hints at alarm and portents.
Then again the Adagietto (Death of Juliet)
is laid out with tangible and touching
refinement.
This is no less true
of the Elegiac Blues written
in 1927 and orchestrated the following
year. Florence Mills represented something
of the black American musical diaspora
in herself and her death provoked this
touching envoi, all the more touching
in fact for its brevity.
The Concerto is scored
for piano, two trumpets, strings and
timpani and is quite dissimilar from
the later Concerto for Piano and Nine
Players. It was orchestrated in 1988
by Edward Shipley and Giles Easterbrook.
Compact and convincing, despite its
relatively low profile amongst Lambert’s
works, there’s real bite and brio in
the rhythmic incision of the first movement
(of four). Try to hear Plowright extract
the optimum bass colouration in the
Presto second movement and the rolling
energy of the score, notably the piano’s
response to the orchestra. There’s a
bucket load of zest – tangy, propulsive,
kinetic and alive. For the Andante Lambert
shunts the soloist further up the keyboard,
with the soloist’s rich lines in response
to brass insistence or more yielding
string material; all of this winding
down to a domestic music box sonority
of ineffable charm and pathos. Impressively
vibrant there’s a decided Russian cast
to the finale that drives all before
it.
The Bird Actors
has a certain Gallic insouciance
in the winds and percussion (cross reference
this to the Siciliana of Romeo and
Juliet) and Prize Fight of
1924, revised 1927, taps into
the vein of pugilism that ran throughout
the 1920s – try Krenek’s slightly later
1927 spoofy one act opera Schwergewicht
oder Die Ehre Der Nation. Satiric
and full of playfully crude quotations
such as When Johnny Comes Marching
Home it certainly doesn’t outstay
its welcome at nine minutes and makes
for a bracing, Stravinsky and Prokofiev
influenced finale.
The recording quality
and booklet notes are up to Hyperion’s
generous standard. The performances
are spot-on.
Jonathan Woolf
See also review
by Rob Barnett
Jonathan Plowright (piano) 
for
details
