Lambert, Constant

Constant Lambert – Concerto for Piano and Nine Players

(b. London, 23. August 1905 – d. London, 21. August 1951)

Overture. p.1
Intermède. p.22
Finale p.41

Preface
Constant Lambert was a major figure in English musical life in the first half of the twentieth century. He was born in London and educated at the famous charitable school Christ’s Hospital in Sussex. There he began to suffer from the ill-health which dogged him all his life. In time spent in the infirmary he read widely, wrote poetry, drew and started to compose. He went on to study at the Royal College of Music, where his teachers included Vaughan Williams. In 1925, while still a student and aged only twenty, he received a commission for a ballet from the impresario Sergei Diaghilev, then in his final years. This was Romeo and Juliet, first performed the following year with choreography by Bronislava Nijinska, though Lambert fell out with Diaghilev over the production and at one point threatened to withdraw his score. A later ballet, Pomona, again with choreography by Nijinska but not for Diaghilev, was also successful. His enthusiasm for ballet led to his appointment in 1930 as resident conductor of the Camargo Society, which was formed as an English successor to the company of Diaghilev, who had recently died. This led to the Vic-Wells, later the Sadler’s Wells Ballet and finally the Royal Ballet. He continued in this role until 1947 and thereafter as artistic adviser and guest conductor. For the ballet he made arrangements of music by many composers, notably Liszt, who was a particular favourite with him. He had a wide range of interests and friends in the arts and he wrote a celebrated and very opinionated polemic, Music Ho! (1934), with the subtitle A study of music in decline, which criticized contemporary musical tastes but praised Sibelius, who was widely popular in England at the time. He married in 1931 but this marriage was not successful, because of Lambert’s infidelity and heavy drinking, and ended in divorce. He went on to have an affair with the ballet dancer Margot Fonteyn and then to marry again in 1947. He died young, of a combination of pneumonia and diabetes, exacerbated by his drinking. …

Full preface / Ganzes Vorwort > HERE