Lambert: Horoscope

Day 265

Lambert: Horoscope

BBC concert orchestra

Barry Wordsworth

I’ve always loved Lambert’s The Rio Grande, but apart from his short piano piece Elegaic Blues I don’t think that I have heard anything else of his. He was an important figure in the ballet world in the period before and during the Second World War not only as a conductor (he was the conductor for the Bliss I listened to a couple of days ago) and arranger but also as a composer. This ballet, written for Margot Fonteyn (with whom he was having an affair at the time) has a bit of a chequered history. The Vic Wells ballet was on tour to the Netherlands in 1940 when the Germans invaded and in the rush to escape the score and orchestral parts got left behind. There are conflicting views about what other sources of the music remain. This recording is described as the complete ballet but also as a suite.

This score is very much in the same tradition as the Bliss I heard earlier - bright and breezy with hints of modernism and some rhythmic flair. Parts of it do sound very similar to The Rio Grande and I suspect that Lambert was a composer of limited means who stuck to what he knew best. There is some appealing lyrical music in the slower sections, sometimes a little reminiscent of Delius.  I did enjoy listening to this - probably a little more than I did the Bliss. It does have a freshness and immediacy which does work well in purely musical terms.