Constant Lambert
(1905-1951)
Pomona: Ballet in One Act (1927)
Tiresias: Ballet in Three Acts (1950)
Michael Cleaver, piano
English Northern Philharmonia/David Lloyd-Jones
Hyperion CDA67049 74:02
Tiresias is an exciting and strange work that is sometimes jazzy and always full of orchestral color . It sounds at times like Stravinsky and at other times it has different contemporaneous flavors, mostly French, but is always engaging. There are passages with bitonality, polytonality, crackling and varied percussion sounds, rude brass choirs, dark strings (absent violins and violas), and sometimes tender meandering winds and extended piano parts. The Greek myth of Tiresias is the inspiration, of course, but it also stands alone as a musical work of interest. It sounds as if it were written during the musically explosive nineteen-twenties, but it was really written shortly before the too-early death of Lambert.
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