Guild turns military in this latest entrant in their Light Music
series. The bands represent the home countries and they take
in the Empire as well courtesy of the 1953 National Band of
New Zealand. Around the fringes we have an American interloper
via Capitol’s Symphonic Band and a brace of Teutonic efforts
from the Deutschmeister Kapelle, an award-winning aggregation
directed by Julius Herrmann.
The various British
organisations are represented by such as the BBC Wireless Military
Band whose rousing Soldiers in the Park was their theme song.
A Japanese Carnival by the obscure composer de Basque turns out to be a nom de
plume of the not-so-obscure Albert Ketèlbey. This is a very
robust piece of Japanoiserie. The Grenadier Guards show exemplary
sang-froid in their Coronation
Bells but there are even bigger compositional guns here;
inevitably Walford Davies’s Royal
Air Force March Past and Eric Coates’s London Bridge March. The former receives
an apposite dusting down courtesy of the RAF band and the latter
is in the indomitable hands of the Grenadiers under Captain
George Miller.
There are a number
of transcriptions or arrangements of classical pieces amidst
the marching and the glory – Moszkowski, Debussy’s Golliwog,
Rimsky’s Tumblers
– and a generic clock piece as well (where would we be without
them). But for the most part we have strong upper lip. That
said it’s a mite weird to find the Band of the Welsh Guards
essaying, in their only contribution, a Paso Doble and the Irish Guards, in their only appearance, dredging up some anodyne Americana.
Still, complaints
about repertoire must be few. Harry Mortimer’s virtuosos show
up, splendidly fiery though brittly recorded by Paxton and we
can welcome the wartime Kneller Hall band. One of the most enjoyable
of all these tracks was Ronald Binge’s Cornet Carillon, a sort of cascading cornets and reminiscent of the
sort of thing he did for strings.
The transfers get
the now standard smooth Guild treatment but here, for once,
I rather dislike some of them. The 1929 Columbias
for instance have much more openness and treble air than are
allowed here; I think Guild is trying to achieve a
conformity of sound between the 1929 and 1950s tracks
but that’s not a desirable accomplishment in my book. If I have
a plea it’s to respect the integrity of the earlier 78s and
not to squeeze the air out of them. But maybe this is a specialist
quibble. I’m sure the notes and production will appeal to a
large audience.
Jonathan Woolf
see also Review
by John France
Deutschmeister Kapelle/Julius Herrmann (1952) 
