Eric COATES (1886-1957)
Orchestral Works - Volume 1
The Merrymakers, a Miniature Overture (1922–23) [4:32]
The Jester at the Wedding: Suite from the Ballet (1932) [24:34]
Dancing Nights, Concert Valse (1931) [7:20]
Ballad, Op.2, for String Orchestra (1904) [5:52]
Two Symphonic Rhapsodies on Popular Songs (1933) [9:34]
By the Sleepy Lagoon, Valse-Serenade (1930) [3:57]
London (London Everyday) Suite for Orchestra (1932) [14:07]
BBC Philharmonic/John Wilson
rec. 2019, MediaCity UK, Salford, Manchester, UK
CHANDOS CHAN20036 [70.39]
John Wilson’s latest recording of Eric Coates’ music, this third, is his first in a new series for Chandos. This disc has been multiply reviewed here and to the avalanche of superlatives and the paragraphs of praise I intend only to add a small additional review.
A dab hand at this kind of repertoire, Wilson is also a classy programme builder. It was sassy to have opened with The Merrymakers, a miniature overture, an avuncular piece that he takes at a tempo that will remind listeners of Coates’ own 78 disc in 1931 or of Adrian Boult’s admirably invigorating recording. Wilson and the BBC Philharmonic play The Jester at the Wedding in full, of course, whereas Coates only recorded one of the movements, The Dance of the Orange Blossoms. Wilson’s reading makes a fine contrast to Boult’s 1975 traversal, the older man’s greater romanticism in the Minuet flowing more avidly, not so staccato as Wilson, who punctuates it in a ‘double-dotty’ Baroque kind of way. The tables are turned in the Humoresque where Wilson is simply sumptuous evoking in the music the Richard Strauss of Rosenkavalier – it makes sense when you realise that Coates as a violist had played under Beecham in his eponymous symphony orchestra and would have been fully acquainted with hot-off-the-press Strauss works. Wilson also gets the Dance Band element inherent in some of Coates’ music.
If Wilson is slower than the composer in Dancing Nights, it serves to accentuate the music’s piquant moods, and its generously easy-going stylishness. From then it’s straight back to the 18-year-old Coates’ Ballad, Op.2, a very Slavic piece of melancholy. Both of the Symphonic Rhapsodies of 1933 are zestier than Barry Wordsworth’s more grand seigniorial approach with the LPO on Lyrita and that’s especially true of the captivating approach Wilson brings to the Allegretto scherzando section of the first, the rhapsody on I pitch My Lonely Caravan. There’s the evergreen By the Sleepy Lagoon to beguile and the suite London to finish. Coates recorded this in 1952 and Boult in 1975. All three agree almost to the second about the tempo of the first panel, Covent Garden. Coates is zippy in Westminster whilst both Wilson and Boult take a more measured Andante whilst in the finale, Knightsbridge, Wilson allies himself with composer briskly, rendering Boult just a bit sedate.
Wilson and his orchestra have been abetted by a fine recording and prove themselves stylish and tonally rich interpreters of Coates’ music. This has all the makings of a top-class Coates’ series.
Jonathan Woolf
Previous reviews: Ian Lace ~ Brian Wilson ~ Nick Barnard
