Constant Lambert - Concerto for Piano and Nine Players

Leonard Constant Lambert (1905-1951) was a British composer, conductor and music critic with a larger-than-life personality. He studied composition at the Royal College of Music with Vaughan Williams, and conducting with Malcolm Sargent. He was equally knowledgeable about literature and the arts, and when his composing career faltered his writing came to the fore along with conducting - notably with the Vic-Wells (later Royal) Ballet. This had led to an affair with dancer Margot Fonteyn.

Constant Lambert

His acerbic wit was most memorably exhibited in his book Music Ho!  - and there are some quotes from this here.

A lot has been written about Lambert - who famously described Vaughan Williams' Pastoral Symphony as being like a cow looking over a gate - and this piece by Hilary Spurling gives an excellent picture of his life and character.

Lamber was one of the first British composers to take jazz and blues music seriously as an art-form.  In his 1930-1 Concerto for piano and nine players, blues plays its part in the finale. The nine players forming the orchestra for this piano concerto are flute, 3 clarinets, trumpet, trombone, cello, bass and percussion. The unusual instrumental combination may been influenced in part by Walton's Façade (Lambert had taken part in a recording of this with Edith Sitwell). The soloist at the Concerto's first performance was Australian composer/pianist Arthur Benjamin.

In this 1976 recording the pianist is composer Richard Rodney Bennett, and details of the music can be had by clicking on the scan of the sleeve notes belew.

Cartridge: Ortofon Xpression MC

Phono amp: Graham Slee Accession MC

Turntable: CTC Classic 301 with SME M2-12R

Click to enlarge