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I knew of Charles Williams
before I knew who he was. Not simply
through the theme tune of Dick Barton,
Secret Agent – and before you ask, no,
I’m too young and it was via records
not the radio show – but also through
Williams’ first career as a violinist.
But before we unpeel my interest in
Williams let’s unpeel Williams. Or,
rather, Isaac Cozerbreit, born in the
Jewish East End of London in 1893 and
a talented fiddle player who studied
at the Royal Academy of Music. War service
was followed by studies with Norman
O’Neill and then life as a light music
exponent (with J.H. Squire’s Octet and
later Williams’ own Octet) closely followed
by elevation to leadership of the New
Symphony Orchestra – in which capacity
he recorded under Elgar, Beecham and
Landon Ronald. It was in 1923 that he
made his only recordings as a solo violinist
(four sides, organ accompanied) for
Zonophone, which is where I first came
across him.
Gradually Williams
moved into the composition of film music
- he worked on Blackmail, Britain’s
first soundie - and also for sound newsreels,
of which there’s an example on this
disc. Williams oversaw Chappells library
of newsreel – atmospheric – music and
after the War once more concentrated
on film music. As he entered his sixties
however many of the composition jobs
had moved on to others and Williams
wound down his career. Ever modest he
refused an honorary doctorate of music
from Oxford and retired quietly to Sussex
where he died in 1978.
The booklet gives details
of those pieces that have been variously
arranged or reconstructed (disastrous
fires and neglect doing for many of
these scores, as with so much film music).
It’s interesting to note therefore that
when I scribbled the words "Elgarian
flourish" against the first song,
High Adventure (better known perhaps
as Friday Night is Music Night) this
interpolation was actually added by
Sidney Torch. The Potter’s Wheel is
here, naturally, under its more formal
guise of Young Ballerina, as is a welcome
slice of pre-Beeching railwayana – Model
Railway and Rhythm on Rails. Williams
was an expert craftsman with an unostentatious
charm that lends colour and glamour
to some of these invigorating pieces,
as in the nicely stitched quotations
in The Bells of St Clements, a mini-fantasia
with organ and bells at the climax.
The Dream of Olwen,
with Roderick Elms as soloist, and one
of his big hits, joined other such bonsai
piano concertos so popular amongst Rachmaninovian
Englishmen of the 1940s – Addinsell’s
being the pre-eminent example, but Williams’
1947 effort by no means outgunned. Spruce
Nauticalia comes in the ship-shape form
of Cutty Sark – here, as elsewhere,
infectiously played by the BBC Concert
Orchestra and Barry Wordsworth. Nursery
Clock must summon up the salon days
of those long gone Celeste octets, Williams’
own and that of erstwhile boss Squire
(whose band was itself a nursery for
some distinguished musicians). The Night
Has Eyes, from a wartime James Mason
film, is romantically troubled and also
well shaped whilst there’s some delightful
string cantilena against the woodwind
calls in Starlings. An early piano lesson
is evoked in The Music Lesson (1955
– Elms again) and the 1940s Destruction
by Fire is derived from those Pathé
newsreels. The earliest thing here is
the 1929 Blue Devils, a march of military
velocity. In addition to trains and
the navy Williams did a fine, mean gallop
(Dick Barton was one but so too is Cross
Country.) And the final track, London
Fair (1955) has a sensitive nobilmente
section, full of his trademark affection.
This well produced
and annotated disc comes complete with
– well, yes, it had to be – a cover
photograph of Dick Barton in radio action.
Duncan "Dick Barton" Carse
stands encased in tweed and John "Snowy"
Mann stares on, his jaw the size of
a small iceberg. A programme engineer
in very sensible shoes stands, armed
and ready to reproduce the sounds of
a duel. Those were the days.
Jonathan Woolf
see also
review by Ian Lace
Roderick Elms (piano) * 