Here’s another album, full of period charm, of
lesser known Ketèlbey pieces all recorded in the early
years of the 20th century. Much of this music was played
to accompany silent films. Indeed one of them, the evocative,
A Desert Romance, was used to accompany the film The
Great Sahara! Elsewhere you can just imagine a 1920s silent
melodrama heroine pleading, sighing and wringing her hands to
the drama and sentimentality of Gallantry and I Call
You From the Shadows while moustache-twiddling, leering
villains can be imagined when listening to Blow, Blow Thou
Winter Wind (and never darken my doorstep again!). One may
also visualise cinema audiences hearing another bit of Ketèlbey
‘travelogue’ music, Jungle Drums although it sounds rather
a bit too like In The Mystic Land of Egypt.
The main item on this the third volume of historic
Ketèlbey recordings from Naxos, is the Cockney Suite,
the composer’s largest work, cast in five movements. It rivals
similar suites by Eric Coates and it opens with a delightfully
swaggering march for A State Procession. Next comes
The Cockney Lover a serenade harmonised in the style of
Debussy and based on two drinking songs, ‘’Arf a pint o’ mild
and bitter’ and ‘Little brown jug’. At the Palais de Danse
shows off different sections of a dance band while the mood turns
sombre with muted strings for the elegiac Thoughts on Passing
the Cenotaph. And the whole is rounded off with all
the fun of the Bank Holiday fair on Hampstead Heath with
mouth organs, busking cornets, a steam organ and fragments of
drinking songs and military band music.
Also included are several of Ketèlbey’s
popular novelties. Mind the Slide has fun with ‘improper’
trombone glissandos. A Musical Jigsaw has a succession
of 44 well known musical phrases ranging from Rossini’s William
Tell to Tchaikovsky’s 1812 by way of Mendelssohn’s
Wedding March and Ketèlbey’s own Sanctuary of
the Heart. Perhaps the most interesting novelty is Fiddle
Fun that features the composer himself on the piano accompanying
an unidentified violinist who shows off, in comical manner, many
of the violinist’s show techniques like double-stops, harmonics,
glissandi and left hand pizzicato.
Another substantial piece is In a Camp of
the Ancient Britons which according to Ketèlbey was
inspired by a visit to Weston-super-Mare – "…when I saw the
gay promenade and in the background the old ramparts (Worlebury)
carrying the mind back to the times of the Roman legions and the
Druids … The music conveys the atmosphere of the old drama gradually
merging into present-day brightness and gaiety."
The programme is rounded off with the stirring
processional march With Honour Crowned composed
to celebrate King George V’s Jubilee in 1935 and performed with
great occasion by the Massed Bands of the Aldershot and Eastern
Commands conducted by Leslie Seymour.
Another nostalgic album full of period charm
to delight Ketèlbey fans.
Ian Lace
Orchestras conducted by Albert
Ketèlbey