George Lloyd writes: "During the summer of 1972 I wrote a number of piano pieces. On the title page of "The Road through Samarkand" I added, "...with burning hearts they danced their way from Calais to Calcutta, but what did they find?". I had been watching the yellow-robed, shaven-headed, chanting, bell-ringers dancing up and down Oxford Street, London; this was at the time when Eastern cults and cheap drugs were persuading young experimenters to trek half-way round the world in the hope of finding new salvation. I pictured them dancing joyfully across Asia ever nearer their final disillusion....The largest and most developed piece on this recording is "An African Shrine," written for John Ogdon in 1966. Violence and revolution in Africa were darkening everyone's hopes. I subtitled the piece as follows: scene: A lonely road. A deserted shrine. A woman kneels weeping. As the armies of the world pass by, she prays."
“Considering George Lloyd's extensive and imaginative sense of orchestral color, I admit to being curious as to whether he would be at home working with the limitations of a solo piano. Absolutely! This is a delightful recording.... good tunes, genuine wit... and a Romantic flair sprinkled with enough of today's idioms to make it relevant”
Click on any of the works listed above for alternative recordings.
