MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

REVIEW


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 

alternatively
CD: AmazonUK

The Golden Age of Light Music – A Second A-Z of Light Music
Track-listing at end of review
rec. 1936-1960
GUILD LIGHT MUSIC GLCD 5182 [77:28]

Experience Classicsonline

Guild’s inventive programming embraces a wide range of options, from Transcription series, to multi-volume discs on diverse themes. This is the second in its catch-all A-Z series in which titles are presented alphabetically. In this volume we start with At the Theatre and end with Zip Along. The only cheat comes via the tricky to place ‘X’ – so we get Exotica instead, with an emphasis on the second letter.

As usual there’s a cavalcade of bands and composers, and conductors. The Regent Classic Orchestra, conductorless, gets things off to a fine, confident Eric Coates-like start. It’s soon followed by the snappy Curtain Time played, with no conductor credit once again, by the New World Theatre Orchestra in 1957. By this time arrangements could sprawl just a bit more then in the days of 2:35 or whatever – this one almost touches five minutes in length and is the longest cut in the programme. Naturally the genre is susceptible to modish batteries of percussion and rhythms, and this is fate not wholly escaped by Percy Faith on Edelma with the near-ubiquitous Mitch Miller doing his thing on oboe.

There’s a refugee from Guild’s Music While You Work series in the shape of the tune Fairy Tiptoe played by Harry Davidson and his orchestra in 1946. The war being over, productivity wasn’t quite so dependent on strict up-tempo Fairies – though the ubiquitous Fairy in the Light Music genre might make an interesting trope for the inquisitive and musical post-graduate.

Gazelle, a lovely tune by Montague Ewing, is charmingly light on its feet courtesy of the New Century Orchestra under its exacting maestro Sidney Torch(insky). This ingenious opus courts the Graingeresque. Unlike, however, the gargantuan arrangement of Ketèlbey’s In A Monastery Garden from the New Century Orchestra under the symphonically-inclined Stanford Robinson, who manages to make the thing sound positively Tchaikovskian. There’s another trope; the influence of Russian orchestral music on British Light Music composers.

If you want newsreel zip turn to Jack Beaver’s Kings of Sport in Robert Farnon’s top-notch recording for Chappell of 1947. And if you want a confluence of elite talents try the next track, Let Us Live For Tonight, wherein Adrian Bernard’s tune is arranged by Sidney Torch and the band is conducted by Reg Leopold, erstwhile maestro fiddler. One conductor of whom the notes are silent is Ernest Maxin who directs his own orchestra in No Orchids for My Lady for Top Rank LP in 1960. Surely this is the Ernest Maxin associated with Kathy Kirby, and who directed and choreographed Morecambe and Wise in some of their greatest TV shows?

There’s a mild dash of exotica courtesy of a Singapore jaunt from Monty Kelly, and a well characterised piece from Charles Williams, as ever on top form for Columbia in 1952. Charles Brull directs The Harmonic Orchestra in a Spoliansky tune. Listen out for Bill McGuffie’s memorable The Unstoppable Man, his film theme of 1960. Then we go right back to Jack Hylton’s somewhat creaky performance of Vienna City of My Dreams in 1936.

So, from A-Z there’s much fun to be had from this latest compilation.

Jonathan Woolf

Track-listing

At the Theatre (Stuart) [2:15]
Regent Classic Orchestra
Bristol Cream (Leutwiller) [2:42]
The Symphonia Orchestra/Curt Andersen
Curtain Time (Johnson) [4:57]
New World Theatre Orchestra
Downland (Milner) [2:56]
L’Orchestre de Concert/Paul O’Henry
Edelma (Tucci) [2:40]
Percy Faith and his orchestra
Fairy Tiptoe (Fredericks) [2:45]
Harry Davidson and his orchestra
Gazelle (Ewing) [2:20]
New Century Orchestra/Sidney Torch
Huckle Buckle (Farnon) [2:59]
Leslie Jones and his orchestra
In A Monastery Garden (Ketèlbey) [4:54]
New Symphony Orchestra/Stanford Robinson
Jack O’Lantern (Feux Follets) (Roger) [1:57]
Roger Roger and his orchestra
Kings of Sport (Beaver) [2:48]
Queen’s Hall Light Orchestra/Robert Farnon
Let Us Live For Tonight (Bernard) [4:04]
New Concert Orchestra/Reg Leopold
Miss Melanie (Binge) [2:23]
Stuttgart Radio Orchestra/Kurt Rehfeld
No Orchids for My Lady (Stranks) [2:34]
Ernest Maxin and his orchestra
On A Little Street In Singapore (DeRose) [3:18]
Monty Kelly and his orchestra
Prairie Schooner (Goodwin) [2:37]
Cyril Stapleton and his orchestra
A Quiet Stroll (Williams) [2:52]
Charles Williams and his orchestra
Romantic Illusion (Spoliansky) [2:56]
The Harmonic Orchestra/I Karr
Stereophonic March (Rose) [2:56]
David Rose and his orchestra
Taxi (Campbell) [2:35]
Danish State Radio Orchestra/Robert Farnon
The Unstoppable Man (McGuffie) [2:04]
Bill McGuffie (piano) and The Cine-Musica of London
Vienna City Of My Dreams (Sieczynski) [3:14]
Jack Hylton and his orchestra
A Waltz for Terry (Duncan) [3:18]
New Concert Orchestra/Dolf van der Linden
Exotica (Green) [3:14]
Philip Green and his orchestra
Young Man’s Fancy (Barrington) [2:29]
New Concert Orchestra/Cedric Dumont
Zip Along (White) [2:41]
The Grosvenor Studio Orchestra


 

 

 

 

 


 

 

 

 

 


 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools






Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.