Mantovani was the son
of a violinist at La Scala Milan. Mantovani
senior seems to have come to England
with an Italian opera company and stayed.
Young Annunzio Paolo Mantovani studied
the violin at Trinity College and played
the Bruch Concerto No. 1 at the age
of 16. But, like many musicians at the
time, he found employment with a Palm
Court Orchestra; thanks to his training
he became proficient at composing and
arranging. He started recording in the
1930s, specialising in Latin American
styles of dance music. His repertoire
gradually expanded to include more concert-style
light music, eventually developing to
his large orchestra with its string-led
sound which made him famous in the 1950s.
This famous, Mantovani sound, with its
cascading strings was invented by the
arranger Ronald Binge, who had worked
with Mantovani on arrangements since
1935.
This disc of recordings
by Mantovani and his various orchestras
covers the years 1940 to 1951 and is
the second in a series on Guild; many
of the tracks have been requested by
admirers. The disc concentrates on lesser-known
recordings and succeeds in giving a
picture of Mantovani which is a little
different to the Mantovani that I remember
from the radio programmes of my childhood.
The disc opens with
Reg Casson’s Castiliana, a recording
first issued on the Decca ‘Music While
You Work’ label, capitalising on the
popularity of the radio programme of
the same name. A charmingly Spanish
piece, the performance is a little frayed
at the edges, an indication of its war-time
date. The other side of the original
disc featured Casson’s The Spirit
of the Matador which crops up later
on the present disc.
Spanish and Latin-American
music makes up a significant proportion
of the disc. The infectiously lyrical
Mexican Starlight is credited
to Pedro Manilla, one of Mantovani’s
aliases. Mantovani also wrote Tango
De La Luna which features a very
rich string sound. His Adios Conchita
features in an attractive Spanish Cocktail
which dates from 1942.
A number of pieces
on the disc feature very strong, string
led sounds, prefiguring the cascading
strings of 1951. Gus Kahn and Victor
Schertzinger’s One Night of Love
is one such, though the boxy 1949 recording
does not do it justice. The piece was
originally written for the 1934 film
of the same name, featuring Grace Moore.
The full Mantovani
sound is found, rather oddly, on a distinctive
arrangement of ‘On With the Motley’
from ‘Pagliacci’, re-titled Tell
me You Love me; one of those pieces
where the brilliance of the execution
and the style of the arrangement sits
oddly with the original material. Another
one of these is the selection from Song
of Norway where the original Grieg
gets a little lost under the layers
of the various arrangers (Robert Wright
and George Forrest arranged the original
Broadway show, the arranger for Mantovani’s
orchestra is not credited).
Ronald Binge was the
arranger of Night’s of Gladness
by Charles Ancliffe; the arrangement
allows the orchestra to let their hair
down and features all sorts of novelties
such as xylophone, tubular bells and
a brief snatch of an electronic organ,
which the sleeve-notes say could be
credited to Binge himself on a Novachord.
The violin soloist
in Jeno Hubay’s Hejre Kati is
not known, but at the time the recording
was made (1950), the string section
included both Max Jaffa and Sidney Bowman.
Gipsy Trumpeter by Martin Vicente
Darre features a fine trumpet solo from
Stan Newsome, Mantovani’s lead trumpeter
from 1947 to 1959.
The disc concludes
with Donald Phillips’s Concerto in
Jazz a charming, sub-Gershwin piece
featuring the piano skills of Arthur
Young.
This is a fascinating
disc as it gives us an opportunity to
appreciate the wider aspects of Mantovani’s
art. If you already possess recordings
of his best known numbers then you should
consider this disc.
Robert Hugill
see
also review by Jonathan Woolf
see
review of Volume 1
Mantovani and his Orchestra
