George Lloyd: The Works for Violin & Piano

George Lloyd started to learn the violin at the age of five and he was a pupil of the violinist Albert Sammons for six years. In his youth, Lloyd’s talent as an instrumentalist allowed him to participate in local musical events from formal concerts to more convivial gatherings: a 1930 newspaper report of a ‘social in the Zennor schoolroom’ observed that ‘Mr George Lloyd played the violin and dancing was indulged in’. Looking back on his formative influences, Lloyd singled out Sammons as having the most lasting effect on his burgeoning creativity, identifying the latter’s ‘instinctive, freely expressive playing’ as having a direct bearing on the kind of music he began to write. In this regard, Lloyd’s description of the sound of Sammons’s playing as ‘gorgeous’, with ‘a lyrical quality’ in which ‘every note seemed to sing’ chimes with the composer’s own essentially lyrical approach to musical lines and phrases.

    Despite his facility in playing the violin and the importance he attached to his lessons with Albert Sammons, Lloyd was relatively slow to compose works for his own instrument. It was not until 1970 that Lloyd wrote Violin Concerto No.1, his first piece with a leading role for his own instrument, but this achievement seemed to stir his enthusiasm and during the next seven years he completed a number of pieces for violin and piano, a fully-fledged sonata and a second concerto. The Seven Extracts from ‘The Serf’ for violin and piano (1974) were published in 2024, and are here recorded for the first time. © Paul Conway