Constant Lambert - The Last Recordings

Fifty years after his death, the composer/conductor Constant Lambert remains and appealing and intriguing figure. By the age of 22 he had already written several major scores including his most popular composition, The River Grande and the ballet Romeo and Julietfor Diaghilev. In 1930 Lambert became conductor of a new ballet enterprise, the Camargo Society, and soon after, he was appointed conductor and musical director of the newly-formed Vic-Wells Ballet, at the same time working as a freelance conductor.

From 1937 to 1950,Lambert made regular visits to the recording studios of The Gramophone Company where he met the young Walter Legge with whom he made almost all of his recordings, apart from a handful of ballet records. As a conductor, Lambert had a composer's approach to interpretation, faithful to the printed score, directly expressed and clear-cut, free of any idiosyncracy.

In 1945, Legge founded the Philharmonia Orchestra and Lambert conducted one of its first recordings. Lambert's last recordings, those that date from 1950, form the items on this disc: Walton's Façade, waltzs by Emile Waldteufel (inluding the famous 'Skaters' Waltz', overtures by Franz Suppe and Chabrier's Ballabile, orchestrated by Lambert.