Constant Lambert - The Rio Grande

English Northern Philharmonia, David Lloyd-Jones (conductor)
Sally Burgess (mezzo-soprano)
Jack Gibbons (piano)
Opera North Chorus

Liner Notes:

The 'richness' al his friends noted about Constant Lambert ran the full gamut of experience, in his music and his life. Everything was to the full, everything acted out with the utmost passion and conviction. Was it the theatre in him? Was there an element of schizophrenia echoing that of Peter Warlock. 'Down' was really d o w n the abyss (Summer's Last Will and Testament); 'up' was preternaturally up, as in the unique, ageless and dateless Rio Grande. Lambert completed The Rio Grande in 1927 when he was 22. He never produced anything like it again, nor does it bear much resemblance to anything else in English music, or for that matter in any music. In its way it's surely a masterpiece, yet Lambert came to regard it as not so much a milestone as a millstone -- 22 is too early to score your greatest popular success, which is what The Rio Grande turned out to be for Lambert.

The seeds were sown in 1923, when Lambert underwent a revelatory experience. CB Cochran had brought over from the USA a group of black singers and instrumentalists for one of the revues he was presenting at the London Pavilion. Will Vodery's Plantation Orchestra played, led by a superb first trumpet, Johnny Dunn (known as 'the creator of wa-wa'): and Lambert was transfixed. He wrote 'After the humdrum playing of the English orchestra in the first half, it was electrifying to hear Will Vodery's band in the Delius-like fanfare which preluded the second. It definitely opened up a new world of sound'. That 'new word of sound' is what Lambert attempts to recreate in The Rio Grande.

The Rio Grande retains a pristine quality. Now hard, now soft, sparkles and glitters one moment, then seduces us the 4 next with the kind of bluesy urban melancholy to be found in deeper, richer measure in quite different context in Summer's Last Will And Testament. It is above all the work of a poet, and Lambert's poetic sensibility has ensured the survival of his best music. The free-fantasy form is simplicity itself: first section (allegro)-cadenza for piano and percussion - slow central section, in the style of a nostalgic tango - recapitulation - tranquil coda.

It is set to the poem of the same name by Sacheverell Sitwell

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Constant
• Lambert
• The
• Rio
• Grande
• Sir
• Sacheverell
• Sitwell
• Symphonic
• Jazz
• Sally
• Burgess
• Jack
• Gibbons
• Opera
• North
• Chorus

[Pam9042]

Sang this as part of a 500 part choir at the Albert Hall in the early 80's, fantastic experience.

[MrAleks1972]

I sang this as part of a massed choir in Nottingham in the late 80s/early 90s - great find!

[ptose]

thank you, great upload

[Glinkaism1]

Wonderful! Thanks for posting!