Anthony Goldstone and Caroline Clemmow - Lloyd: The Piano Works Solo & Duo (2024)

‘I just write what I have to write’. The artistic credo of George Lloyd conveys the directness and emotional honesty of his music. He wrote in a traditional idiom enriched by a close study of selected models, Verdi and Berlioz chief among them. His music is distinctive and written with integrity. There is a remarkable consistency to his output, most of which was created spontaneously and without the incentive of a commission. He was fortunate enough to discover his individual and versatile musical voice at an early age. The deceptively artless quality of his scores stems from a thorough grounding in composition techniques. 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. © Paul Conway