DESCRIPTION:
Horoscope - Ballet (1938)

VI. Bacchanale
VII. Valse for the Gemini
VIII. Pas de Deux
IX. Invocation to the Moon and Finale

This is the surviving music from the ballet "Horoscope" by British composer Constant Lambert (1905-1951). Lambert was a child prodigy who began composing orchestral music at age 13. By age 20, Sergei Diaghilev commissioned Lambert to write a ballet (Romeo and Juliet) for the famous Ballets Rousses. Lambert was highly interested in jazz and African American music, and he intended his cantata "The Rio Grande" - probably his most famous composition - to feature a black choir. He became a successful conductor with the Vic-Wells ballet (later the Royal Ballet). After the popular failure of his major choral work "Summer's Last Will and Testament" (after the play of the same name by Thomas Nashe), Lambert decided that he had failed as a composer, and he concentrated almost exclusively on conducting for the last 14 years of his life. He was a central figure in the intellectual circle of Sacheverell Sitwell and Anthony Powell, who probably modeled the character Hugh Moreland in "A Dance to the Music of Time" after Lambert. An alchoholic, he passed away at age 45 from diabetes and pneumonia.

The ballet "Horoscope", choreographed by Frederick Ashton, is based on astrological themes (like Gustav Holst's The Planets). The famous ballerina Margot Fonteyn, who was having an affair with Lambert, starred in the 1938 premiere. The scenario concerns a young man and woman born under the disjoint signs of Leo and Virgo who are able to overcome their fate and become lovers - this has been interpreted as a representation of the relationship of Lambert and Margot Fonteyn. It was a critical success, but the ballet suffered a major setback in 1940. The Vic Wells company was touring in the Netherlands with "Horoscope" and "The Wise Virgins" (the ballet by William Walton based on the music of J.S. Bach), when German forces invaded the country. The ballet company quickly fled, leaving behind all their scenery and costumes, as well as the scores to the two ballets. The Vic Wells stopped performing the work, and the only nine surviving numbers are the ones in this recording.

Conductor: Barry Wordsworth
BBC Concert Orchestra