BILL WORLAND
Tres Señoritas; Shopping Spree; Pepita; Brighton Belle; It's
Spring Again; and other works
RTE Concert Orchestra Gavin
Sutherland
Marco Polo 8.225161
[77:28]
Crotchet
Amazon UK AmazonUS
CDNow
Bill Worland (born 1921) is a name new to me: in his authoritative guide
British Light Music, Philip Scowcroft lists well over 250 composers,
but Worland is not one of them [He is represented
in the on-line version: Garland 31
and 54. LM], even though
for the past 50 years he has been a prolific composer of light music in the
characteristically British idiom. Apparently he has persevered in his task
despite what he regards as a long period of neglect of not only his own music
but also of that by other contemporary composers. The recent revival of interest
in light music, largely stimulated by the Marco Polo series of discs launched
in 1992, is certainly to be welcomed.
It would be nice to be able to congratulate the octogenarian composer on
a belated recognition of his work, and to thank Marco Polo for bringing it
before the public. Alas, though the Marco Polo series consists almost entirely
of one-composer discs, I have to say that few of these composers can sustain
interest for 80 minutes or so, and Worland just isn't one of them. If tunefulness
is the prime requisite of light music I'm afraid that few, if any, of his
melodies are memorable; and the routine structures rarely deviate from the
predictable.
The orchestral writing is skilful enough (though the oboe figures
disproportionately as a solo instrument); but the music is devoid of rhythmic
surprises and its harmonic language is tediously constricted by an excess
of tonic and dominant sequences. Many of the pieces (particularly the
Mediterranean- and Latin American-inspired numbers) are cliché-ridden
and repetitive. (To illustrate these points, Worland's Brighton Belle,
for instance, is no match for Vivian Ellis's Coronation Scot).
Shopping Spree is perhaps the most attractive of the disc's 19 tracks
and it could well earn a place in a future anthology of British light music.
Adrian Smith
Performance
Sound
