Lambert Conducts Warlock and Bliss

Peter Warlock

Here are additional English compositions conducted by the supreme talent Constant Lambert - songs by Peter Warlock and a neglected march by Arthur Bliss.

Warlock - The Curlew and Two Songs

The playful fellow you see at right is the 20th century English composer Peter Warlock. While he did have a jolly side - heard in some of his songs - a dark side was expressed both in his art and very likely in his death.

Here is what I wrote about him years ago: "Peter Warlock, a pseudonym for Philip Heseltine, mainly wrote songs during his short life, which ended in what is most likely suicide at age 36. He is lightly regarded as a composer - possibly because he was a miniaturist, but his songs are of a very high standard. The Curlew cycle is his masterpiece, his music fitting extraordinary well to Yeats' bleak poetry. ('No boughs have withered because of the wintry wind; the boughs have withered because I have told them my dreams.') 

"But the composer responds just as strongly to joyful verse such as the Shakespeare setting 'Pretty Ring Time.' This dual aspect of Heseltine's work is sometimes thought to express the dual Heseltine/Warlock identity."

Composer-conductor Constant Lambert was a close friend of Warlock during the 1920s. He led this performance of The Curlew in March 1931, a few months after Warlock's death. The performers included the International String Quartet, the baritone John Armstrong, and Terence McDonagh, who was to begin a long career with English ensembles by joining the new BBC Symphony at age 22. He takes the important English horn part in this work.

John Armstrong has a prominent, rapid vibrato that can be distracting, but is otherwise good as the vocal soloist.

The Curlew set was issued by the National Gramophonic Society, a subscription company that would soon close shop after making first recordings of many works, including this one, I believe. Thanks to my friend Nick Morgan for information on this release. You can find his research on this pioneering organization here. This transfer may well have originated with Nick, although I did find it on Internet Archive, and clean it up for presentation at this time.

You can find the second recording of The Curlew, with Alexander Young and the Sebastian String Quartet, here.

The National Gramophonic Society set also includes two other songs by Warlock - "Sleep," with words by Beaumont and Fletcher, and "Chop Cherry," from a work by George Peele.

 Bliss - March - The Phoenix (Homage to France)

Arthur Bliss and Constant Lambert preparing the ballet
Miracle in the Gorbals in 1944

Lambert also was friends with another important composer, Arthur Bliss. In 1944 he began preparing the Sadler's Wells Ballet production of Bliss's contemporary work, Miracle in the Gorbals. (Lambert's 1946 recording of the score can be found here.)

Also in 1944, Bliss was working on one of his stirring marches, The Phoenix (Homage to France). Lambert conducted the first recording, also in 1946, with the Philharmonia Orchestra. This piece is reminiscent of the composer's march theme from the film Things to Come, and looked forward to his superb Welcome the Queen of 1954.

LINK

Lambert Conducts Auber, Waldteufel and Chabrier

My recent post of Daniel Auber's Fra Diavolo Overture on my other blog reminded me that I have this set of French music - including another Auber treat - ready to go, as conducted by one of my long-time favorites, the English composer-conductor Constant Lambert (1905-51).

Auber's Les diamants de la couronne ("The Crown Diamonds") Overture leads off this collection, here in a 1938 performance with Lambert conducting the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Auber (1782-1871) is seldom heard today, but his music is delightful, similar in spirit to the better-known Gioachino Rossini.

Daniel Auber and Émile Waldteufel as seen by their contemporaries

Lambert championed the music of Émile Waldteufel (1837-1915). In previous posts, we heard the composer's waltzes Les Patineurs and Pomona. Today we complete Lambert's set of Waldteufel's works with Estudiantina and Sur la plage. He handles the music wonderfully well in 1950 recordings with the Philharmonia Orchestra.

Finally, we have Lambert's last recording. As it happens, it is his own orchestration of a posthumous work by Emmanuel Chabrier (1841-94), a graceful Ballabile, written for piano.

The sound of these vintage recording is splendid.

LINK

A Fantin-Latour painting of Emmanuel Chabrier at the piano. Vincent d'Indy is at right.

Liszt from Moiseiwitsch and Lambert

Benno Moiseiwitsch

The distinguished Russian-born English pianist Benno Moiseiwitsch (1890-1963) has appeared on these blogs only once before, in the Delius piano concerto. Today we find him in the company of conductor Constant Lambert (1905-51), who has often graced these pages (here and here), in the music of a composer whom they both found congenial - Franz Liszt.

Franz Liszt in 1847

With the London Philharmonic, they perform Liszt's Hungarian Fantasia (Fantasie über ungarische Volksmelodien, S123), dating from 1850. In terms of recorded repertoire, the pianist was actually far more inclined to Chopin, Rachmaninoff and Schumann than Liszt, but this outing finds him entirely sympathetic to one of the future Abbé's showiest (and most enjoyable) works.

The recording comes from 1939. When issued in 1940, the critic of The Gramophone wrote, "For music such as this I do not think one would easily beat this soloist. Dash is needed rather than delicacy; bravura, swank, not subtlety. I have never excessively admired Moiseiwitsch’s tone, especially in its more firmly dug-in moments, but it has most of the qualities, and all the dexterity, that one can best enjoy in this riot of mock-rurality."

Harold Schoenberg wrote of Moiseiwitsch that "he represented the last vestiges of romanticism as it was actually practiced in the romantic period - which means pliancy, a perpetually singing line, concentration on inner voices and a free approach to the notes. In Moiseiwitsch's case, freedom was always tempered by impeccable musicality."

Constant Lambert

Lambert, himself a fine composer, was a great admirer of Liszt. His accompaniment here is supportive, but, as The Gramophone noted, "the L.P.O is not, one might put it, brought up to these high jinks; nor, perhaps, does any British band quite abandon itself to folly with the most endearing candour."

The sound here is very good for its period.

LINK

Lambert Conducts Weinberger's 'Chestnut Tree' Variations

Jaromír Weinberger

Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree is the second best-known work by the Czech composer Jaromír Weinberger (1896-1967), following his opera Schwanda the Bagpiper. If you are familiar with the latter - or its orchestral excerpts - you will know what to expect from the former: tuneful, kaleidoscopic, fascinating and charming all at once. A true successor to the dances from Smetana's The Bartered Bride.

The 1939 premiere of Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree was a high point in a decade of frustration for the composer. His works had been banned in Germany and then Austria. He fled to the US in 1939. Even so, he had difficulties in getting the new composition performed. As he wrote in the New York Times, "On Aug. 31, 1939, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London wrote me a letter, stating that my Variations Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree had been scheduled for a performance Nov. 30 at Albert Hall. Three days later the outbreak of war had postponed such a plan indefinitely."

But John Barbirolli, the music director of the New York Philharmonic, intervened with a performance on October 12 of the same year. It was well received.

The next day, Howard Taubman wrote in the Times, "The melody of Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree ... is a simple one, and Mr. Weinberger has fashioned his variations cunningly. In each of the seven variants he has attempted to evoke some English scene or sentiment, since the tune is English in its origin." The variations are titled "Her Majesty’s Virginal," "The Madrigalists," "The Dark Lady," "The Highlanders,"  "Pastorale," "Mr. Weller, Senior. Discusses Widows with His Son, Samuel Weller, Esq." [from Dickens' The Pickwick Papers] and "Sarabande."

Constant Lambert

Barbirolli did not record the work, but two other noted conductors - Constant Lambert and Artur Rodziński - quickly did so. It's not clear who was first. As I explained on another occasion, "Lambert's session with the London Philharmonic was on December 21, 1939. Sources differ on the Cleveland date: Michael Gray says it was December 13, 1939; Donald Rosenberg in The Cleveland Orchestra Story specifies January 9-10, 1940."

The Rodziński/Cleveland reading appeared a few years ago on my other blog, and has now been remastered to fix a pitch discrepancy. This post newly presents the Constant Lambert set, in good sound for the time and masterfully conducted, as always.

As you may be aware, I have been remastering and posting Lambert records here and on my main blog for some time, both from my own collection and as they have appeared on Internet Archive. This performance comes from the latter source, transferred from the US Victor pressings and remastered by me.

LINK

Constant Lambert Conducts Borodin and Waldteufel

The composer-conductor Constant Lambert has been a long-standing interest of mine, as demonstrated by the frequent posts both on my main blog and most recently on this singles outpost, where I presented his recording of Émile Waldteufel's Skaters Waltz.

Today, we follow up that Waldteufel post with another from that composer - the waltz Pomona, again in a sophisticated performance by the Philharmonia Orchestra under Lambert. Waldteufel (1837-1915) was an Alsatian composer whose best-known work was the Skaters Waltz mentioned above, aka Les Patineurs.

Alexander Borodin

Lambert also was an aficionado of Russian music. His Tchaikovsky recordings have appeared on Big 10-Inch, but here he is in a superior performance of an atmospheric composition by Alexander Borodin (1833-87), In the Steppes of Central Asia. This helpful introduction to the motifs in the piece comes from Wikipedia: 

A caravan of Central Asians is crossing the desert under the protection of Russian troops. The opening theme, representing the Russians, is heard first; after it, the strains of an ornamented eastern melody on English horn, representing the Asians. The melodies eventually combine contrapuntally. Amid these two ethnic melodies Borodin inserts a "traveling" theme in pizzicato that represents the plodding hoofs of the horses and camels. At the end, only the Russian theme is heard.

As with the Waldteufel, this memorable work was recorded in London's resonant Kingsway Hall, the Borodin in 1946 (also with the Philharmonia) and the Waldteufel in 1950. Both recordings were remastered from 78 needle-drops on Internet Archive.

LINK

Constant Lambert Conducts 'The Skaters Waltz'

In 1937, Composer-conductor Constant Lambert (1905-51) devised a ballet score for the Vic-Wells Ballet called Les Patineurs, utilizing music from two operas by Giocomo Meyerbeer. Selections from that score have appeared on disc several times, including a set by Lambert in 1939. My other blog has the 1950 Sadler's Wells recording led by John Hollingsworth, one of Lambert's successors with the company.

Émile Waldteufel

By the time of the Hollingsworth recording, Lambert was a sick man who would survive only until August of the following year. Fortunately the UK Columbia company had him in the recording studio several times in 1950, with his final session in late September. Among those last dates were a few devoted to the works of Émile Waldteufel (1837-1915), the Alsatian composer whose best-known work was another (and better known) Les Patineurs - in the Anglophone world usually called The Skaters Waltz.

Lambert also recorded more works by Waldteufel at the same time - Estudiantina, Pomone and Sur la plage. I don't - or to be more accurate, Internet Archive does not - have those discs. A shame because Lambert and the Philharmonia Orchestra do Les Patineurs beautifully, and the Kingsway Hall sound as remastered in ambient stereo is excellent.

I admire Lambert's conducting, and generally like his championing of lighter works such as this. In his last year of recording, he had a final go at Walton's Façade (which can be found on my other blog), plus Suppé's Morning, Noon and Night in Vienna (also available there). His last recorded performance was his own arrangement for orchestra of Chabrier's piano piece Ballabile (which I don't have).