Façades is a new CD of music by William Walton and Constant Lambert; much of it comparatively unknown.  It’s a mix of songs for tenor and piano and music for piano duet.  The disk begins with Lambert’s Trois pièces négres for two pianos.  The bookends are fairly up tempo jazz inflected numbers with a perhaps Poulenc influenced slow middle section.  Curiously only the white notes of the pianos are used.  It’s the first touch of what I tend to feel about Lambert’s music; clever, well crafted but, in the last analysis, not very interesting.

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