As Constant Lambert lay dying, Alan Sanders’ notes
relate, a friend found him conducting in time to a test pressing of
one of Waldteufel’s waltz recordings contained on this splendid Somm
disc. The previous year, having resigned from Sadler’s Wells, he had
re-recorded The Rio Grande (with Kyla Greenbaum) and the suite
from Horoscope. He already had a distinguished series
of recordings behind him and these last 1950 recordings are a sprightly
pendant to a discography cut short by his untimely death. The
recordings also show that he was one of those rare conductors whose
expertise embraced the lighter repertoire as adeptly as he did, say,
Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony, a recording that still seems to me a
signal achievement.
He had at his disposal for his final sessions the Philharmonia
Orchestra in delectable form. Clarinets are well to the fore of the
balance in Waldteufel’s Estudiantina waltz as are some sultry
sounding strings, a powerfully astringent first trumpet and some solidly
stentorian trombones. By contrast Pomone has a luxuriance and
largesse – there is a lilt and a delightful sway to the music making
only enhanced by the spick and span orchestral playing. Les Patineurs,
probably the best known of the Waldteufel waltzes is affecting, spruce,
thrives on rhythmic acuity and graded dynamics (no laziness on Lambert’s
part when it comes to matters of sectional discipline) and real depth
of tone from the bases. In Sur la Plage Lambert encourages some
affecting playing from the first violins on the first page but is infectiously
alive to the more rumbustious aspects of the piece. His Suppé
is just as laudable. I liked the weight he gives the stern lower strings
in Pique Dame. And he generates real heat here as well – vivacious,
sonorous, rhythmically alive – and also humorously inflected. The cello
principal is suitably grave in his solo in Morning, Noon and Night
in Vienna, well contrasted with the formality of the succeeding
orchestral tutti. Listen to the violins here – razor sharp articulation
and real swagger.
Lambert revisited Walton’s Façade for
the last time in these 1950 sessions and he brings everything one could
reasonably expect to the suite. Mordant, witty, sharp-edged Lambert
is brilliantly successful at bringing out the vivid, shuddering naughtiness,
say, of the Valse or the sultry atmosphere of Noche espagnole
or the blues trombone in Old Sir Faulk. Finally there is
Lambert’s own orchestration of Chabrier’s charming little Ballabile.
After which, of course, there was silence. Lambert died in his mid
forties but this splendid disc preserves much of his vitality and vigour
in congenial and delightful repertoire.
Jonathan Woolf
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Constant Lambert