Lloyd, George (1913 - 1998)

[antongould]

On 8 July Ian Skelly had as his slow moment on Essential Classics the 2nd movement of Lloyd’s 4th Symphony ...... conducted by the composer ....
In his preamble IS mentioned this article which I had not come across before ..... https://catholicherald.co.uk/george-...healing-music/

[Edgy 2]

Thank for that anton.
The Requiem was performed at a late night (I think) Prom a few years ago.
This composer is very dear to me and it's good to know that GL's music has actually made it to the morning schedule

[ardcarp]

Thanks from me too, anton. An excellent article, prompting me to do something I've always intended to do, i.e. get to know more of George Lloyds symphonic repertory.

[antongould]

Thank for that anton.
The Requiem was performed at a late night (I think) Prom a few years ago.
This composer is very dear to me and it's good to know that GL's music has actually made it to the morning schedule

It seemed to be played after countless requests from the same chap Rob ..... Skellers trotted out the usual “ .. he is played on Radio 3 quite often ... “ .... well 9 times in 2020 thus far .... and of course only 5 different pieces ..... still I suppose we can but hope for more ....

[Edgy 2]

It seemed to be played after countless requests from the same chap Rob ..... Skellers trotted out the usual “ .. he is played on Radio 3 quite often ... “ .... well 9 times in 2020 thus far .... and of course only 5 different pieces ..... still I suppose we can but hope for more ....

Wow I didn’t realise his music had featured so much,no complete Symphony though I see which I suppose is not surprising for the morning schedules

[seabright]

The Proms premiere of the delightful George Lloyd 6th Symphony cond. Edward Downes is well worth a listen ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uj46qhrUglE&t=461s

[Edgy 2]

The Proms premiere of the delightful George Lloyd 6th Symphony cond. Edward Downes is well worth a listen ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uj46qhrUglE&t=461s

A you tube favourite this

[Alison]

I was inspired By this thread to listen to the Fourth Symphony late last night.

A thrilling ride, I emerged renewed in mind and spirit!

Philharmonia/Downes version, playing to die for.

[Edgy 2]

I was inspired By this thread to listen to the Fourth Symphony late last night.

A thrilling ride, I emerged renewed in mind and spirit!

Philharmonia/Downes version, playing to die for.

That's what a George Lloyd Symphony can do

[Cockney Sparrow]

A friend who deals with vinyl discs received at an Oxfam shop tells me they are probably going to put a number of Lyrita G Lloyd discs on their website........should that interest anyone here.

(He isn't a vinylista but told me he already has the recordings - he rates LLoyd "he actually includes melodies.....".)

[Keraulophone]

That's what a George Lloyd Symphony can do

Empty of choral stamina and losing the will to live was the general feeling after we’d been put through George Lloyd’s Symphonic Mass with the BBC NOW in Truro Cathedral a few years ago. The broadcast was later tucked away on an unsuspecting weekday afternoon. Martyn Brabbins told us that the orchestration was so bad that at in some passages the choir was unlikely to be heard beneath the tumult of the brass and the rest of the orchestra going full tilt. The choir hardly gets a break through the lengthy work so that we were sore vexed by the end.

Lloyd enthusiasts will probably already know that a complete cycle of his twelve symphonies has been embarked on by the Ealing Symphony Orchestra: https://www.ealingso.org.uk/news/lloyd-cycle
.

[Serial_Apologist]

There's been some discussion about George Lloyd hereabouts recently, so tonight's two programmes on Radio 3 might seem timely:

6.45pm - Sunday Feature: What Did George Lloyd Do Wrong?

Simon Heffer assesses the legacy of Cornwall-born composer George Lloyd (1913-98), who achieved great success early in his life, including symphonic performances by orchestras in Bournemouth, Penzance and Eastbourne and two operas staged in London, including The Serf (at Covent Garden. Yet from his mid-20s and with the outbreak of the Second World War, Lloyd wouldn't see such success again for another 30 years, despite many attempts to interest people in his music. Heffer in joined by the composer's nephew William to help tease out the remarkable highs and lows of this turbulent creative trajectory. Sharing first-hand recollections are pianist Kathryn Stott - who premiered his Third and Fourth Piano Concertos - and violinist Tasmin Little, who recorded his chamber music.

7.30pm - George Lloyd's Sixth Symphony
Featuring music by George Lloyd, including his Sixth Symphony in a performance in which he conducted the BBC Philharmonic. Plus a brass recording by the Black Dyke Mills Band of his HMS Trinidad march.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001mttx

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001n2m0

[Serial_Apologist]

If the Sixth Symphony and the brass band march were typical, I think I can see the problem with George Lloyd. The symphony started out, and I immediately thought - ah, "Orb & Sceptre". From then on, the first movement seemed almost Poulenckian in its succession of other composers coming immediately to mind - Walton, Bax, Bliss - but without the wit, unless the whole thing was meant to be taken as ironic, which I rather think not. The first theme of the slow movement was. sorry to say this, merely banal - I found myself knowing exactly what was coming next, and actually singing along with a melody I had never heard before. Not that it was all badly put together, but the feeling was that nothing in the music seemed to matter; why extend or build on the material more adventurously when the predictable could be made so uninteresting? What I heard of the "bustling" third movement, when I wasn't dropping off, continued along similarly meretricious lines. As for the brass band piece, the image that came to mind was of the sea front somewhere on the South Coast - Eastbourne, most probabably - circa 1900, along which moustachioed gentlemen wearing boaters, and jackets buttoned up to the tie knot, ambulated, arm-in-arm, with ladies with parasols and wide hats, while small boys with Eton collars swaddled uncomfortably in thick woolen suits, and small girls with ribbons in their hair, followed obediently behind.

There are composers who sound like other composers - Hanson, Glazunov, Bowen to name three - and others who like "good tunes"; but the best of them make something of the models - Moeran for example - or, like Arnold, who wrote some good brass band compositions, could deliver a catchy tune. I'm afraid George Lloyd was lacking in all these areas, for me at any rate.

[ahinton]

If the Sixth Symphony and the brass band march were typical, I think I can see the problem with George Lloyd. The symphony started out, and I immediately thought - ah, "Orb & Sceptre". From then on, the first movement seemed almost Poulenckian in its succession of other composers coming immediately to mind - Walton, Bax, Bliss - but without the wit, unless the whole thing was meant to be taken as ironic, which I rather think not. The first theme of the slow movement was. sorry to say this, merely banal - I found myself knowing exactly what was coming next, and actually singing along with a melody I had never heard before. Not that it was all badly put together, but the feeling was that nothing in the music seemed to matter; why extend or build on the material more adventurously when the predictable could be made so uninteresting? What I heard of the "bustling" third movement, when I wasn't dropping off, continued along similarly meretricious lines. As for the brass band piece, the image that came to mind was of the sea front somewhere on the South Coast - Eastbourne, most probabably - circa 1900, along which moustachioed gentlemen wearing boaters, and jackets buttoned up to the tie knot, ambulated, arm-in-arm, with ladies with parasols and wide hats, while small boys with Eton collars swaddled uncomfortably in thick woolen suits, and small girls with ribbons in their hair, followed obediently behind.

There are composers who sound like other composers - Hanson, Glazunov, Bowen to name three - and others who like "good tunes"; but the best of them make something of the models - Moeran for example - or, like Arnold, who wrote some good brass band compositions, could deliver a catchy tune. I'm afraid George Lloyd was lacking in all these areas, for me at any rate.

Following a programme aiming to persuade listeners that it's high time for reappraisal of Lloyd's music with a performance of his Sixth Symphony struck me as self-defeating. The "end-of-pier" atmosphere that you so eloquently describe in the brass band piece informs far too much of this symphony which is, I believe, one of his weakest and most anodyne, although his cycle of symphonies as a whole tends towards such characteristics all too often, with cliché-ridden and undistinguished material, for all its fine orchestral facility. The Fourth Symphony has some engaging material let down badly by a hollow ending that borders on the crass and the Eighth is not without its virtues but, for all his confident grasp of form, he rarely seems to conceive anothing that amounts to an arresting symphonic whole. The latter three of his four piano concertos, each of which (as the composer admitted) grew out of its predecessor, seem to evidence so thin a spreading of material and ideas as to make one wish that he'd managed to concentrate their contents into a single concerto. His best work of all seems to me to be the Seventh Symphony.

One might wonder whether his ghastly wartime experience and its long-term adverse consequences held back his creativity or perhaps even damaged it irreparably, though not for want of courageous determination on his part to resume, yet as his Seventh and Eighth Symphonies date from well after that horrendous incident this would appear not to be so. Whatever the BBC attitude to him during the Glock era really was (and the programme usefully focussed, albeit momentarily, on debunking the myth that his scores would habitually be returned unopened), his place in the pantheon of English symphonists of his day seems not to be an especially high one; when one thinks, for example, of Rubbra, Walton, Berkeley and Tippett before him and Arnell, Arnold and Simpson after him (not that one hears the symphonies of Arnell all that often either), he appears to be under somewhat stiff competition. A few more performances of his Fourth, Seventh, Eighth and Eleventh Symphonies wouldn't come amiss (I don't know any of his concertos other than those for piano and I'm also unfamiliar with his choral and brass band music), but if we're to consider English symphonists born in the first quarter of the past century, Rubbra, Simpson and Arnold seem to me to warrant wider attention than does Lloyd. Were Lloyd's Seventh Symphony typical of his offerings, there would undoubtedy be a case for revisiting his work; sadly, however, it just isn't.

[Pulcinella]

BREAKING NEWS!!

Lyrita Nimbus Arts is today announcing that they have reached an exclusive agreement with The George Lloyd Society to take over the sale and hire of ALL Lloyd's scores as well as the commercial exploitation of the collection of recordings made by the Society and conducted by the composer.