Release Date: 06 September 2024
Label: Lyrita - Cd / Lyrita
Packaging Type: Paper Back Book
No of Units: 1
Barcode: 9790708221111
Genres: Classical Solo Instrumental
Composer/Series: George Lloyd
Description
As a violinist, Lloyd was drawn to stringed instruments rather than the keyboard. His wife, Nancy had a very different attitude to the piano, however. Having been brought up listening to records of Alfred Cortot, among other great pianists, she had developed a genuine passion for the instrument. She was always urging her husband to write a piano concerto, but it was not until the early 1960s that those years of persuasion paid off and Lloyd wrote Scapegoat, the first of his series of four piano concertos. Now the composer had overcome his previous aversion to the keyboard, as he put it, 'Suddenly, everything I thought of, I thought in terms of the piano'. From this dramatic change of heart emerged several works for solo piano. At the head of the score of The Lily-Leaf and the Grasshopper (1972), Lloyd has written, 'One evening as I lay in my canoe by the banks of the Avon, I saw a large lily-leaf come floating down stream, on it sat a grasshopper'. The painterly outer portions of the piece generate a languid, serene atmosphere. In the lighter and more animated middle section, the grasshopper holds sway. This principal character in the narrative even gets a dramatic lead-in, replete with expectant trills. As ever with Lloyd, the material is meticulously proportioned, so that the scene-setting opening sequence and the summatory close are both given due weight to counterbalance the dynamic, wide-ranging central exploits.
George Lloyd
Simon Callaghan; Hiroaki Takenouchi
Simon Callaghan
George Lloyd
George Lloyd
George Lloyd
George Lloyd
George Lloyd
George Lloyd
George Lloyd
George Lloyd
George Lloyd
George Lloyd
George Lloyd
George Lloyd
George Lloyd
