MARBECKS COLLECTABLE: Lloyd: Symphony No.1 on A / Symphony No 12

The audience at the Troy Music Hall was in for a treat the night of March 30, 1990: George Lloyd, whose Symphony No. 11 had been premiered with the Albany Symphony to rapturous acclaim a few years earlier, was going to conduct both his earliest and latest Symphonies. The First was written in a burst of inspiration after he turned 19 and it was first performed in November of 1932, with a second performance a year later. Then the work was revised twice, and untouched until the 1980s, when Lloyd deemed it worthy of revival. A wonderfully romantic, tuneful work, it abounds in youthful energy and not only sounds robustly "British" but even shows hints of the great Italian opera composers both Lloyd and his father had a passion for (the spirit of The Barber of Seville can be felt in the final sections). The Twelfth Symphony, commissioned for the Albany Symphony, would be his last work in the series. Like the Symphony in A, the work is in a single movement consisting of three continuous sections. Youthful abandon has been replaced by a soaring, heartbreaking lyricism and a sense of drama reflecting the long, often frustrating artistic life Lloyd had, but the work also revels in the kind of victory and resultant calm one achieves late in life.