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Mantovani - By Special Request - Vol. 2 1940-1951

Mantovani and his Orchestra and Mantovani and Concert Orchestra
Recorded 1940-1951
GUILD LIGHT MUSIC GLCD 5113 [76.50]

Crotchet Budget price

Reginald H CASSON
Castiliana [3:00]
The Spirit Of The Matador [3:09]
Gus KAHN
One Night Of Love [3:09]
Frank CHURCHILL and Larry MOREY
Love Is A Song [2:58]
Pedro MANILLA alias MANTOVANI (1905-1980)
Mexican Starlight [3:15]
Tango De La Luna (Tango Of The Moon) [3:20]
Charles W ANCLIFFE (1880-1952)
Nights Of Gladness [3:00]
Pasqual MARQUINA
Spanish Cocktail - Intro: Spanish Gipsy Dance Adios Conchita (Pedro MANILLA alias MANTOVANI), A Girl Like You (TRADITIONAL) [2:56]
David ROSE (1910-1990)
Our Waltz [3:10]
Ronald BINGE (1910-1979)
Siesta - a Rumba Serenade [2:55]
Edvard GRIEG (1843-1907)
"Song Of Norway" - selection Intro: Strange Music, Now, Midsummer Eve, Freddie And His Fiddle, I Love You arranged Robert WRIGHT (b.1914) and George Chet FORREST (b.1915) [6:17]
Felix GODIN
Valse Septembre [2:38]
Juan LLOSSAS (1900-1957)
Tango Bolero [3:15]
Ruggero LEONCAVALLO (1857-1919)
Tell Me You Love Me, adapted by Sammy Kaye [2:46]
Jenö HUBAY (1858-1937)
Hejre Kati [2:58]
Martin Vicente DARRE (b.1916)
Gipsy Trumpeter featuring Stan Newsome, trumpet [3:53]
MANTOVANI (1905-1980)
In Waltz Time (Mantovani) [3:00]
Sebastian de YRADIER
La Paloma [3:11]
L CONALD
Oh Mama Mama [2:59]
Richard ADDINSELL (1904-1977)
One Magic Wish (On An Evening Star) [3:09]
Bernard PHELPS
The Choristers with wordless vocal chorus by Stella Roberta and Jack Plant [3:17]
Donald PHILLIPS (1913-1994)
Concerto In Jazz featuring Arthur Young, piano [8:24]

 

Here’s another dose of Mantovani, with a number of tracks coming from listeners’ requests to Guild, following the success of their earlier disc, which I also reviewed here. There’s something of a glut of Mantovani at the moment but these are less well-known items dating principally from the 1940s and 1950. They’re pre cascading-strings-Mantovani therefore but all are imbued with his generous sense of romance and his arrangers’ nuanced and imaginative work.

Castiliana is suitably rich and Gus Kahn’s One Night Of Love ripely romantic. There’s some dramatic Latin Americana, spiced with lissom charms, in Mexican Starlight courtesy of Pedro Manilla, alias Mantovani. And as before in this series we cover a lot of stylistic ground because along with the exotica in which he specialised we also find spruce Englishry – try Charles W Ancliffe’s Nights Of Gladness. Ancliffe has featured before in Guild’s Light Music Series and his music never fails to impress. He’s a master of concert-piece compression and here he packs lyric tunefulness, nobility and some bell chimes into there minutes.

Mantovani pays tribute to David Rose in Our Waltz, even emulating the distinctive Rose saxes, and Ronald Binge, so important a figure in the development of the Mantovani sound, contributes Siesta, a perky Rumba. Mantovani wasn’t afraid to seek out material from lighter classical sources and here we find some Grieg, a Song of Norway selection released in 1946. The big band symphonic approach works well, if a touch grandiloquently on Tango Bolero and there’s some luscious strings and muted trumpet on Vesta la giubba, known here in its Sammy Kaye adaptation as Tell Me You Love Me. More classics are visited in Hubay’s Hejre Kati, a feature for the orchestra’s (uncredited) leader and La Paloma.

In between we have some big fat trumpet work, à la Harry James or Ziggy Elman, in Gipsy Trumpeter – which has ripped off the Benny Goodman solo and drums arrangement of Sing, Sing, Sing. Still, Mantovani provided many spirit-lifters. Take the maracas and sunshine of Oh Mama Mama, which must have transported mind, though not body, in the rationed days of 1950. Less so the pious One Magic Wish, probably the only ecclesiastical waltz ever to have been written – let’s hope so anyway. To finish we have another well-worn genre number, the pocket piano concerto – here it’s not a Rachmaninov tribute though, as almost all the others were. Donald Phillips wrote Concerto in Jazz with Gershwin on his mind and Arthur ("Art" on the labels) Young did the honours at the keyboard. Rhapsody in Blue is paraphrased as closely as was Rach 2 in those other British Bombshell Concertos, though we get a dose of Boogie Woogie and some Teddy Wilsonish moments as well. Good fun, and no harm done.

Another enjoyable dash of Mantovani then, a good decade’s worth and many unfamiliar and unusual numbers in good sounding transfers.

Jonathan Woolf