Lord Berners is, understandably, the short form of the honorific attending to English baron the Right Honorable Sir Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt-Wilson. Berners was most things a man of peerage should not be -- he was unambitious, uninterested in the diplomatic corps for which his rearing prepared him, and "worst" of all, a musician. Marco Polo's Lord Berners: The Triumph of Neptune features conductor David Lloyd-Jones in a program of ballet, theater, and film music of Lord Berners in works stretching from his early "futurist" ...
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Lord Berners is, understandably, the short form of the honorific attending to English baron the Right Honorable Sir Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt-Wilson. Berners was most things a man of peerage should not be -- he was unambitious, uninterested in the diplomatic corps for which his rearing prepared him, and "worst" of all, a musician. Marco Polo's Lord Berners: The Triumph of Neptune features conductor David Lloyd-Jones in a program of ballet, theater, and film music of Lord Berners in works stretching from his early "futurist" period of 1918 to a more germane, but still sharply hewn, stylistic idiom dating from the Second World War.The most fascinating work here is L'uomo dai baffi (1918; The Man with the Moustache), incidental music composed for a marionette theater performance organized by Italian futurist Fortunato Depero. Berners' score, made for a tart-sounding chamber orchestral combination, is occasionally reminiscent of Stravinsky, though other parts are reminiscent of music that Luigi Dallapiccola...
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