Vocal and Orchestral works by British Composers
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: William Walton, Peter Warlock, (Sir Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt-Wilson, Baronet) Lord Berners, Arthur (Drummond) Bliss, (Leonard) Constant Lambert
Label: Symposium
Magazine Review Date: 2/1998
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 79
Catalogue Number: SYMCD1203

Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
Façade, Movement: Tango-pasodoble |
William Walton, Composer
Chamber Orchestra Constant Lambert, Wheel of Fortune Woman Edith Sitwell, Wheel of Fortune Woman William Walton, Conductor William Walton, Composer |
Façade, Movement: Black Mrs Behemoth |
William Walton, Composer
Chamber Orchestra Constant Lambert, Wheel of Fortune Woman Edith Sitwell, Wheel of Fortune Woman William Walton, Composer William Walton, Conductor |
Façade, Movement: Tarantella |
William Walton, Composer
Chamber Orchestra Constant Lambert, Wheel of Fortune Woman Edith Sitwell, Wheel of Fortune Woman William Walton, Composer William Walton, Conductor |
Façade, Movement: A man from a far country |
William Walton, Composer
Chamber Orchestra Constant Lambert, Wheel of Fortune Woman Edith Sitwell, Wheel of Fortune Woman William Walton, Conductor William Walton, Composer |
Façade, Movement: Polka |
William Walton, Composer
Chamber Orchestra Constant Lambert, Wheel of Fortune Woman Edith Sitwell, Wheel of Fortune Woman William Walton, Conductor William Walton, Composer |
Façade, Movement: Valse |
William Walton, Composer
Chamber Orchestra Constant Lambert, Wheel of Fortune Woman Edith Sitwell, Wheel of Fortune Woman William Walton, Conductor William Walton, Composer |
Façade, Movement: Jodelling song |
William Walton, Composer
Chamber Orchestra Constant Lambert, Wheel of Fortune Woman Edith Sitwell, Wheel of Fortune Woman William Walton, Conductor William Walton, Composer |
Façade, Movement: Scotch rhapsody |
William Walton, Composer
Chamber Orchestra Constant Lambert, Wheel of Fortune Woman Edith Sitwell, Wheel of Fortune Woman William Walton, Composer William Walton, Conductor |
Façade, Movement: Popular song |
William Walton, Composer
Chamber Orchestra Constant Lambert, Wheel of Fortune Woman Edith Sitwell, Wheel of Fortune Woman William Walton, Conductor William Walton, Composer |
Façade, Movement: Fox-trot (Old Sir Faulk) |
William Walton, Composer
Chamber Orchestra Constant Lambert, Wheel of Fortune Woman Edith Sitwell, Wheel of Fortune Woman William Walton, Conductor William Walton, Composer |
Façade, Movement: Long steel grass |
William Walton, Composer
Chamber Orchestra Constant Lambert, Wheel of Fortune Woman Edith Sitwell, Wheel of Fortune Woman William Walton, Composer William Walton, Conductor |
Rio Grande |
(Leonard) Constant Lambert, Composer
(Leonard) Constant Lambert, Composer Alan Whitehead, Alto Constant Lambert, Conductor Hallé Orchestra Hamilton Harty, Piano St Michael's Singers |
Things to come, Movement: Ballet for Children |
Arthur (Drummond) Bliss, Composer
Arthur (Drummond) Bliss, Composer Arthur Bliss, Conductor London Symphony Orchestra |
Things to come, Movement: Attack |
Arthur (Drummond) Bliss, Composer
Arthur (Drummond) Bliss, Composer Arthur Bliss, Conductor London Symphony Orchestra |
Things to come, Movement: Pestilence |
Arthur (Drummond) Bliss, Composer
Arthur (Drummond) Bliss, Composer Arthur Bliss, Conductor London Symphony Orchestra |
Things to come, Movement: The World in Ruins |
Arthur (Drummond) Bliss, Composer
Arthur (Drummond) Bliss, Composer Arthur Bliss, Conductor London Symphony Orchestra |
Things to come, Movement: March |
Arthur (Drummond) Bliss, Composer
Arthur (Drummond) Bliss, Composer Chorus London Symphony Orchestra Muir Mathieson, Conductor |
Things to come, Movement: Epilogue later renamed as 'Theme and Reconstructio |
Arthur (Drummond) Bliss, Composer
Arthur (Drummond) Bliss, Composer Chorus London Symphony Orchestra Muir Mathieson, Conductor |
(The) Curlew |
Peter Warlock, Composer
Constant Lambert, Conductor International Quartet John Armstrong, Tenor Peter Warlock, Composer Robert Murchie, Flute Terence MacDonagh, Cor anglais |
Corpus Christi |
Peter Warlock, Composer
Ann Wood, Contralto (Female alto) BBC Chorus Leslie Woodgate, Conductor Peter Pears, Tenor Peter Warlock, Composer |
Fugue |
(Sir Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt-Wilson, Baronet) Lord Berners, Composer
(Sir Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt-Wilson, Baronet) Lord Berners, Composer John Ansell, Conductor Symphony Orchestra |
Author:
Here is a feast for all Anglophiles. First comes a sparkling selection from Walton’s Facade conducted by the composer in November 1929. Recorded at London’s Chenil Galleries, it features the incomparable Edith Sitwell and brilliant young Constant Lambert as narrators. The 24-year-old Lambert is entrusted with seven out of the 11 chosen items and his virtuoso, clean-cut delivery was deemed ideal by the score’s creator. It is followed by Lambert’s January 1930 premiere recording of his own indelible Rio Grande (with Sir Hamilton Harty a most accomplished and poetic piano soloist). Five years ago, as part of their Great Recordings of the Century series, EMI reissued Lambert’s fine 1949 remake with the Philharmonia and Kyla Greenbaum (9/92 – nla), but the earlier Halle account remains something to treasure, possessing an exuberance and unforgettable poignancy that continue to shine like a beacon across the decades. Fortunately, Symposium’s honest-to-goodness transfer is a great improvement on its curiously muffled BBC Records predecessor (9/90 – nla); somewhat surprisingly, Anthony Griffith’s transfer for EMI (last available on a Treasury LP, 10/88 – nla) has yet to make it to CD.
Next, we get the four excerpts from Bliss’s legendary score for Things to come which the composer was able to commit to disc with the LSO nearly one whole year before the February 1936 sessions for the soundtrack proper. For the latter enterprise, Muir Mathieson was at the helm and it is he who conducts the magnificent “March” and “Epilogue” which make up the remainder of Bliss’s concert suite. The composer-directed items are, of course, already available on Dutton Laboratories’ invaluable “Bliss conducts Bliss” collection (8/95) in a slightly quieter (though not necessarily more natural-sounding) transfer than the present one.
Lambert reappears as the director of a most moving rendering of Warlock’s masterpiece The curlew. This, the work’s first recording (and the final venture to be realized by theGramophone-funded National Gramophonic Society), dates from March 1931, a mere three months after Warlock’s death, and with the exception of the flautist, features the same line-up as performed the piece at the Warlock Memorial Concert broadcast from the Wigmore Hall one month previously. It is, as I say, a most eloquent, committed display, tenor John Armstrong’s ardent, rather tremulous manner serving up a vivid reminder of the stylistic practice of the period. Leslie Woodgate’s 1936 version of Warlock’s delectable Corpus Christi with the BBC Chorus marked the debut on disc of Peter Pears (heard here in his freshest voice), while John Ansell’s lively (and extremely rare) 1929 Decca recording of Lord Berners’s mischievous Fugue in C minor rounds off a valuable, generously full anthology. Transfers throughout are well made and pleasingly ‘non-interventionist’.
AA
Next, we get the four excerpts from Bliss’s legendary score for Things to come which the composer was able to commit to disc with the LSO nearly one whole year before the February 1936 sessions for the soundtrack proper. For the latter enterprise, Muir Mathieson was at the helm and it is he who conducts the magnificent “March” and “Epilogue” which make up the remainder of Bliss’s concert suite. The composer-directed items are, of course, already available on Dutton Laboratories’ invaluable “Bliss conducts Bliss” collection (8/95) in a slightly quieter (though not necessarily more natural-sounding) transfer than the present one.
Lambert reappears as the director of a most moving rendering of Warlock’s masterpiece The curlew. This, the work’s first recording (and the final venture to be realized by the
Discover the world's largest classical music catalogue with Presto Music.

Gramophone Digital Club
- Digital Edition
- Digital Archive
- Reviews Database
- Full website access
From £8.75 / month
Subscribe
Gramophone Full Club
- Print Edition
- Digital Edition
- Digital Archive
- Reviews Database
- Full website access
From £11.00 / month
Subscribe
If you are a library, university or other organisation that would be interested in an institutional subscription to Gramophone please click here for further information.