Despite sub-prime economic gloom, plummeting house prices and
the price of rice we’re living in good times for lovers of that
well-known sub-genre, the British Light Classic. I’ve given up
counting the permutations in which the phalanx of ear-titillating
miniatures has wafted upon the ear of the expectant listener but
Classics for Pleasure, itself redolent of more innocent times,
excavates some classic performances in this well filled disc.
Whilst in Beechamesque
mode may I take this opportunity soundly to thrash the anonymous
sleeve note writer for his effrontery in claiming that Albert
Ketèlbey’s real name was William Aston. This is a figment of
someone’s imagination, one of those Leo Stokes/Leopold Stokowski
moments that infiltrate popular culture with ease and leave
with difficulty. This splendidly rich composer had an eminent
violinist brother called Harold Ketèlbey so let’s away with
the hogwash.
One might expect
that Gilbert Vinter, composer himself of, amongst other things,
Hunter’s Moon would lead a spry and frisky account of
Eric Coates’s The Merrymakers. So it proves. Vinter of
course directed the BBC Midland Light orchestra in Birmingham
and was highly experienced in the ethos of music making. So
too was Reginald Kilbey who leads both the Studio Two Concert
Orchestra and the City of Birmingham Orchestra – the first named
in Ronald Binge’s evergreen Elizabethan Serenade and
the latter in Coates’s even more evergreen Calling All Workers.
This last incidentally is juxtaposed with maximum potential
for contrast with By the Sleepy Lagoon – a waltz therefore
playfully situated next to a rousing March.
Other eminent rostrum
practitioners include John Lanchbery who does the Ketèlbey honours
from a much-loved LP of 1978 and Charles Groves, dashing in Coates.
Vivian Dunn – long recalled as a principal director of music and
bandmaster of the Royal Marines but a founding violinist in the
BBC Symphony let’s not forget – turns in some attractive Grainger
and the catchy Trevor Duncan piece as well. This egalitarian sounding
composer really was shielding his real name, Leonard Trebilko,
from greater publicity. So too was that other splendid violinist-light
orchestral conductor Charles Williams who made Zonophone 78s in
the 1920s. This pukka sounding gent, bringing his Dick Barton
so resonantly to life for a generation and more, was actually
born Isaac Cozerbreit and made some solo violin discs for Zonophone.
Plenty more to amuse
and invigorate of course; nostalgia runs riot in the “Bonus tracks”
section though I’m not sure as to why thus taking the disc to
a reasonable seventy-four minute playing time should be accounted
a “bonus.” But those of you who warmed your bones on the gruel
of the times should enjoy the theme tunes to Top of the Form,
The Archers, In Town Tonight (a frisky Sidney Torch in charge
of proceedings) and that bastion of the seafaring race, the Late
Night Shipping Forecast.
Jonathan Woolf
City of Birmingham
Symphony Orchestra/Reginald Kilbey 
