Customer Reviews

Constant Lambert: Summer's Last Will and Testament / The Rio Grande / Aubade Heroique

5 star:		(3)
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For me, Summers Last Will and Testament is Constant Lambert's finest work. It is a 50 minute long choral piece based on Elizabethen dance forms and setting words from Thomas Nashe's masque about London during the plague years, published in 1600. It uses the very rich harmonic language that Lambert is so good at, but steers away from the jazz-inspired work he is more famous for - such as in the upbeat Rio Grande, also on this disk. Just listen to the seven minute orchestral introduction, a melancholy sicillianne with oboe soloist, for a taste. First performed in 1936, the piece has had only a handful of performances since and no recording, until David Lloyd Jones, who has recorded other Lambert works, revived it. He has a real feel for the music. The late Christopher Palmer - also a champion of the music of William Walton and Bernard Hermann - produced this recording, and also wrote the notes, some of the best I've read. Highly recommended before it goes out of print.

Mr Lambert, I took a gamble on your "Last Will and Testament" looking for some new choral music, you did not dissapoint. The title work remains a solid listen throughout. It is works like this that make classical music so much fun, to find a great hidden gem (something hyperion and harmonia mundi seem to do so well). I completely agree with the previuos two reviews.

Somehow Constant Lambert managed to create a work of incontestable beauty even with the Plague(s) as the subject matter. This is another example of music that truly needed a revival as grand as this fine performance. The pairing of "Summer's Last Will and Testament" with the restful "Aubade Heroique" and the jazzy "Rio Grande" make this disk worthy of a place in your collection. All of these are fine performances, and as the previous reviewer stated, please snatch it up before it goes out of print.