George Dyson - Violin Concerto (1942)

Sir George Dyson KCVO (28 May 1883 – 28 September 1964) was an English musician and composer. After studying at the Royal College of Music (RCM) in London, and army service in the First World War, he was a schoolmaster and college lecturer. In 1938 he became director of the RCM, the first of its alumni to do so. As director he instituted financial and organisational reforms and steered the college through the difficult days of the Second World War.

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Violin Concerto (1942)

I. Molto moderato (0:00)
II. Vivace (20:24)
III. Poco andante (25:33)
IV. Allegro ma non troppo (36:15)

Lydia Mordkovitch, violin and the City of London Sinfonia conducted by Richard Hickox

Dyson said of himself as a composer, "My reputation is that of a good technician … not markedly original. I am familiar with modern idioms but they are outside the vocabulary of what I want to say". The music critic of The Times remarked that Dyson's works had a certain ambiguity, "due probably to the fact that great musical skill was allied, exceptionally, with an extrovert temperament." The same writer observed that although everything Dyson wrote was well made, he never developed a personal idiom, "nor engendered much emotional sap in his larger works".

Dyson's biographer Paul Spicer writes that of the composer's works only The Canterbury Pilgrims and two sets of evening canticles in D and F are performed with any frequency. Dyson himself chose to include the following works in his Who's Who entry: In Honour of the City, 1928; The Canterbury Pilgrims, 1931; St Paul's Voyage, 1933; The Blacksmiths, 1934; Nebuchadnezzar, 1935; Symphony, 1937; Quo Vadis, 1939; Violin Concerto, 1942; Concerto da Camera and Concerto da Chiesa for Strings, 1949; Concerto Leggiero for Piano and Strings, 1951; Sweet Thames Run Softly, 1954; Agincourt, 1955; Hierusalem, 1956; Let's go a-Maying, 1958; and A Christmas Garland, 1959