The Film Music of Constant Lambert & Lord Berners

As a young man, Lambert developed interests in French and Russian music and three years after winning a scholarship to the Royal College of Music he was collaborating with the great Russian impresario Diaghilev on the ballet Romeo and Juliet. Lambert would go on to become musical director and conductor of the Sadler’s Wells Ballet. He wrote the score to the film of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (1945) whose cast included Vivien Leigh and Ralph Richardson Dances by Glinka are woven into the ball scenes but elsewhere Lambert relies very much on his own voice, using a generous range of instruments including triple woodwind, four trumpets and trombones, and two harps. Lord Berners worked as a diplomat, serving as honorary attaché in Constantinople and later in Rome, he returned to England on his succeeding to his title, and lived the rest of his life there. As a composer he drew the highest praise from Stravinsky, and the consistently sharp focus of his small musical output ensures his survival as a unique figure in British music of the period. The three film scores featured here constitute some of the last music he was to write. Champagne Charlie (1944), starring Stanley Holloway, Tommy Trinder and Betty Warren, is a lively recreation of the bawdy music halls. The film is famous for the song ‘Come on Algernon’, praised as a hysterically realistic music hall number. The Halfway House (also 1944) was Ealing Studio’s first foray into the occult. The score is quintessential Berners, very much of a piece with his concert and ballet music.