George Lloyd (1913-1998)
The Works for Violin and Piano
Lament, Air and Dance (1977)
Violin Sonata (1978)
Seven Extracts from ‘The Serf’ (1938 arr 1974)
Tasmin Little (violin) and Martin Roscoe (piano)
Ruth Rogers (violin) and Simon Callaghan (piano)
rec. 1989, St Martin’s Church, East Woodhay, UK (Lament and Sonata), June 2024, Concert Hall, Wyastone Leys, Monmouth, UK (The Serf)
Lyrita SRCD.424 [88]
George Lloyd had been a violinist in his youth, studying for six years with Albert Sammons, Britain’s leading violinist, so one would expect him to have an affinity for the instrument. It was slow to come to compositional fruition – a series of operas and symphonies had occupied him – but the Violin Concerto No 1 appeared in 1970 and over the next seven years he wrote more avidly for the instrument.
Two large-scale works for violin and piano are reissued in the Lloyd ‘Signature Edition’. They were recorded in 1999 by Tasmin Little and Martin Roscoe and the violinist has gone on record concerning the uneasy nature of Lloyd’s presence, as she felt it, as the producer of the disc. It was her first recording, so far as I’m aware, and she found him nagging and controlling. Or perhaps, to Lloyd, he was being meticulous and thorough. Maybe the truth is in the middle. In any case, that was a quarter of a century ago and the performances still hold up.
Lament, Air and Dance (1977), a triptych lasting half an hour, encodes a backward-looking but in no way pastiche-saturated Chaconne – reminiscent of the Vitali Chaconne he so loved – which is unusual in his writing. The way Lloyd fluidly threads these Baroque elements into the formidably constructed Lament is particularly impressive, conceived as the music is as a kind of rhapsodic, quasi-improvised structure that only unveils some late-Romanticism toward the end of its length. The Air has a refined lyricism as its core, its beautiful cantilena making an immediate appeal, and the capricious Dance finale is full of contrasts and filigree fun. There’s some slinky writing in alt too and some rich, albeit brief double-stops and a real fiddler’s flourish to end.
The Violin Sonata dates from the following year and opens in melancholy, but its withdrawn paragraphs gradually lighten and become contrastingly lyrical, to which turbulence can be added before a return, in an arch, to the opening mood. The central section pits a gaunt piano against a winsomely lyrical violin before the rousing finale, full of fiery dynamics and very approachable melodic writing.
For this reissue, Lyrita adds a first recording of Seven Extracts from the Opera ‘The Serf’ arranged by the composer. It was made in the Concert Hall, Wyastone Leys, Monmouth by Ruth Rogers (violin) and Simon Callaghan (piano). These broadly conceived extracts are compressed character pieces, in effect. He wrote two large orchestral suites derived from ‘The Serf’ in 1997 but back in 1974 had arranged these seven little pieces, full of virtuoso challenges, expressive laments, veiled warmth – Prokofiev hints along the way – and rippling refinement. This recycled music proved practical for Lloyd, as ‘The Serf’ didn’t enjoy many performances because it was – in part – prohibitively expensive to stage. Lloyd meanwhile thought it contained some of his best music. It’s finely played here, though the concert hall recording is a touch ‘wide’ for my own tastes.
Paul Conway’s notes are excellent, as ever.
Jonathan Woolf
Buying this recording via a link below generates revenue for MWI and helps us keep free access to the site
