George Lloyd (1913-1998)
The Works for Brass
Royal Parks (1984)
Diversions on a Bass Theme (1986)
Evening Song (1991)
H.M.S. Trinidad March (1941, arr. 1991)
English Heritage (1987)
A Miniature Triptych (1981)
Equale Brass (Triptych); John Foster Black Dyke Mills Band / David King
rec. 1984, Wyastone Leys, Monmouth, UK (Triptych); 1991, Dewsbury Town Hall, UK
Lyrita SRCD.425 [76]
George Lloyd’s brass works fit snugly onto one CD, not least because they contain a previously unreleased 1984 recording of A Miniature Triptych. They’re issued here in the ‘Signature Edition’ and derive from Albany recordings with the exception of that recording making its first appearance on disc.
With the exception of the rousing H.M.S. Trinidad March, which was composed in 1941 when he was serving in the band of the Royal Marines, but which Lloyd arranged for brass band in 1991, everything dates from the productive decade between 1981 and 1991. Apparently Royal Parks was thought too easy for a competition piece but it certainly makes for a fine listening experience. Its opening is a perky, avian affair, and richly sonorous. The work’s heart, though, lies in the In Memoriam central movement, composed for the bandsmen killed by an IRA explosion in 1982, an event Lloyd, who lived nearby, heard and, indeed, went to investigate. Its elegiac character develops incrementally over six minutes towards a powerfully intoning peroration, moving in its directness.
Two years later Lloyd wrote Diversions on a Bass Theme, once again as a test piece, but this time with a greater quotient of technical demands than Royal Parks. It’s a set of variations with excellent themes finely organised and structured. Lloyd doesn’t neglect to build his final panel to a memorable conclusion, via a gentle, reflective passage, complete with percussion wash. Cast on a similar span is a work rooted in his boyhood as a precocious young composer – Evening Song. Written as a ten-year-old, this is a quietly engrossing little carol that later saw service in John Socman and Eventide for two pianos. Here, for brass band, it’s developed with characteristic skill and sure awareness of its sonic warmth.
English Heritage was commissioned in 1987and offers three contrasting movements. The first is ceremonial but also, in places, thoughtful and introspective, whilst the central movement is an expressive Largo. The finale unleashes the full panoply of Lloyd’s wit in a cocky and exciting panel replete with bells and reverential reflective paragraph. As the former bandsman, he knew just how to layer his writing and as a symphonist he constructs structures that bear their weight splendidly. The final piece, the only one not to be performed by the John Foster Black Dyke Mills Band under David King, is A Miniature Triptych, played by Equale Brass, a starry contingent from the Philharmonia Orchestra in 1984 – John Wallace and John Miller, trumpets, Michael Thompson, horn, Peter Bassano, trombone, and John Jenkins, tuba. This brass quintet is the most allusive and technically tricky of the pieces here, its temperature sometimes hard to gauge, moving as it does from the enigmatic to the more overt but retaining a sense of aloofness throughout. Even in the more frolicking aspects of the finale – rhythmically tricky, with questions of balance to attend to – it remains a more interior composition and all the more welcome, therefore, in this restored recording.
Once again, Paul Conway’s notes tell you everything you need to know and this uniform Lloyd edition continues happily on its way.
Jonathan Woolf
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