MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2023
Approaching 60,000 reviews
and more.. and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             

BUY NOW 

Crotchet   AmazonUK   AmazonUS

Mantovani - By Special Request - The Golden Age of Light Music
Cole PORTER
Begin The Beguine
Benjamin FRANKEL/PURCELL
Carriage And Pair
Sydney BAYNES
Destiny Waltz
Nicholas BRODSZKY
The Way To The Stars – theme from the film
Morton GOULD
Tropical
Richard ADDINSELL
Blithe Spirit – Waltz Theme – from the film Whirlwind - arranged Ronald BINGE
MANTOVANI
September Nocturne – with Arthur Sandford, piano
STANLEY/BORGUNO/ARRES
The Timbalero – Rumba
Phil CARDEW
Passing Clouds
Pedro MANILLA
Blue Mantilla
Dennis FERN
Flying Saucers (Bees in the Bonnet) – with Arthur Sandford, piano
A VILLOLDO
El Choclo (Kiss Of Fire) (arranged Barry)
Adrian ROSS/Lao SILESU
Love Here Is My Heart
DOELLE/MAIR
When The Lilac Blooms Again
Oscar STRAUSS, DUCREUX, PURCELL Love’s Roundabout (La Ronde de L’Amour)
E DONATO
A Media Luz
Zdenek FIBICH
Poème (My Moonlight Madonna)
Alfons CZIBULKA
Love’s Dream After The Ball
BERGER
Amoureuse (So Madly In Love)
Paul REMY/Felix KING
Chiquita Mia
BIXIO/SIEVIER
Love’s Last Word Is Spoken
Josef RIXNER
Blauer Himmel
HEUBERGER/COCHRAN
Suddenly (Im Chambre Separeé)
Ian STEWART
The Whistling Boy
HANNAH/WILLIAM/KENNEDY
The Agnes Waltz
Mantovani and his Orchestra
Recorded 1943-53
GUILD LIGHT MUSIC GLCD 5110 [77.44]


Britain benefited enormously from expatriate Italian musicians. Both Mantovani and Campoli came to London within a year or so of each other, aged no more than six, as their musician fathers sought better employment prospects. Both men’s careers began similarly; prodigiously talented, early training (in Mantovani’s case at Trinity) and early debuts. Both gravitated towards the light field, restaurants and theatre bands, and grew to fame. Of course Campoli’s ambitions lay elsewhere but Mantovani’s career in light music was long lasting and famously productive.

It helped that he also played the piano and that he had such fine arrangers. It was Ronald Binge who was largely responsible for the Cascading Strings, that glamorous waterfall that was so much a part of the Sound. But there was much else; the standard of musicianship in all sections was high, the songs were snappy and brightly contoured and Mantovani had an ear for piquant colour. So Begin the Beguine is here – of course – as is The Way to the Stars with its fine strings but there’s also the Noel Coward selection, with the Waltz from Blithe Spirit proving to have a sultry wash of fiddles and notable clarinet. Binge’s Whirlwind is rousing stuff and there’s some ruminative, romantic piano in Mantovani’s own September Nocturne. He wrote quite a fair amount, often under pseudonyms, and this one shows his sensitive palette and romantic affiliations. With Flying Saucers (Bees in the Bonnet) we embrace the novelty genre and there’s the tang of the accordion in the promisingly titled El Choclo (Kiss of Fire). We can sample the Binge-Mantovani strings at their most cascading in Love’s Roundabout – and the band at its most soupy in Fibich’s Poème (a performance that would have made a Palm Court fiddler blush). To balance that there’s the rococo charm of Ian Stewart’s The Whistling Boy which like the rest of this programme was recorded in the decade between 1943 and 1953.

Mantovani’s was the top band of its type and here’s a fine selection of its Deccas. I have a strong feeling that the discs could yield more treble than they do in these transfers; there’s been just a little too much noise reduction and that’s squeezed a bit of the air from them. Still, that’s a relatively small matter; there’s no surface noise in compensation.

Jonathan Woolf

.


Return to Index

Error processing SSI file