Yet another marvellous collection from Guild! Such variety
and so much to enjoy. As I have said before, for me, the joy
of light music is the perfectly conceived, and executed, orchestral
miniature. Here we get not only a deal of those, and for that
I am most grateful, but also three Piano Concertos!
It’s hard to know where to start but I give full marks for Charles
Williams’s Girls In Grey, a marvellously up–tempo march
written for the Women’s Junior Air Corps, and subsequently used
as the title music for the BBC’s Television Newsreel. Of the
three other marches included, Jack Beaver gives us Voice
Of Industry, jaunty and with a slight Eric Coates feel to
it. Ronald Hanmer’s Olympic Games March was written for
the last Olympics held in England, and it was also the last
Olympic Games where there was a prize for musical composition
– I believe that this was one of the original ideas of the modern
Olympics, and one which successive philistinistic Governments
probably couldn’t wait to drop; Polish composer Zbigniew Turski
won the last composition prize with his Sinfonia olimpica
– and it is full of idealism and bags of optimistic spirits.
Leighton Lucas’s Marche Fantastique is a more easy-going
piece with a Vaughan Williams sound to it – why is this delightful
piece not heard?
After these pieces, the music falls into three categories, works
by lesser known composers, works by very well known composers
and the Concertos. Of the first category, Louis Alther’s American
Serenade is a piece of languid mood music, John Belton’s
Down The Mall is a bright and breezy night out of a piece,
which contrasts well with Allan Gray’s ominous Prelude to
A Matter of Life and Death. Of this group, I found Wynford
Reynold’s A Cocktail of Happiness totally irresistible
– the xylophone solo and sub–Stéphane Garppelli fiddle adding
to the gaiety – and Don Gillis’s Short Overture is a
real winner, mixing some cowboy fiddling, with a bit of Hindemith
and a wild rumba. Fabulous stuff! If you like Morton Gould’s
Latin American Symphonette, then this is for you.
Of the well known composers, Hoagy Carmichael’s Stardust
gets a very discrete arrangement from Percy Faith (this is how
these great songs should be arranged, with subtlety and great
care), and you’d have to be light on your feet to dance to Eric
Coates’s brisk waltz Footlights! I welcome any work by
Frederic Curzon, for we hear too little of him, and his Bonaventure
is a nice mix of Elgarian pageantry and Oldye England ŕ la Korngold
in Robin Hood mode. Dvorák’s innocent little Humoresque
becomes a real good time girl in David Rose’s hands – splendid
– and Willie the Whistler turns up like Till Eulenspiegel,
thumbing his nose at all and sundry. Back to pageantry, but
of a jovial kind, with Ketčlbey’s Royal Cavalcade, showing
how his work, whilst slightly out of vogue during this time,
had kept up with changes in taste and style. Melachrino’s justly
famous, and very spritely, Starlight Roof Waltz comes
from the revue Starlight Roof, which gave the stage debut
to a young Julie Andrews. Sidney Torch’s On a Spring Note
is a cheeky little morsel, and Edward White’s The Fairy And
The Fiddlers is a charming piece of whimsy. To end this
selection the music which accompanies the building of the Spitfire
from Walton’s score for The First of the Few, in its
concert adaptation, in a very boisterous interpretation by the
composer – my only complaint is that we weren’t given the stunning
Prelude as well. Finally, we come to the three Concertos,
which aren’t Concertos in the classical sense. Australian Albert
Arlen, after training at the New South Wales State Conservatorium
and the École Normale de Musique de Paris, came to London and
worked in the West End as an actor whilst continuing to compose.
In 1939 he joined the RAF and saw action in Middle and Far East,
which inspired him to write his El Alamein Concerto.
It’s a one movement work in the manner of the Warsaw Concerto
or Clive Richardson’s London Fantasia. There’s much bravura
writing for the soloist, as well as a section in the middle
where the Last Post is sounded on they keyboard to the accompaniment
of drums, obviously as a memorial to those who fell in the North
African campaign. Boogie Woogie Moonshine lacks details
of composer or arranger but it contains the song You Are
My Sunshine as well as part of the Moonlight Sonata
which appears with a boogie bass. If only Beethoven had thought
of that himself, he wouldn’t have wanted for money later in
life. Finally, Edward Ward’s Lullaby Of The Bells, an
original work from the film The Phantom Of The Opera
where most of the music consisted of arrangements of Chopin
and Tchaikovsky. As with the El Alamein Concerto this
packs a lot into a small space, not least, some fine, and exciting,
fast music, balanced by quiet and atmospheric interludes.
So ends this survey of light music and I found it one of the
most satisfying and enjoyable of all Guild’s issues so far in
this series. Here are a set of records of impeccable standard,
and indeed, it’s amazing to hear these records sounding so fresh
and lifelike. The transfers are superb, and there has been no
compromising of the upper sound range by removing the 78 crackle.
Good notes and great presentation. What more could you want?
Bob Briggs
See also review by Jonathan
Woolf
Details
John BELTON
(pseudonym for Tony LOWRY and Douglas BROWNSMITH (1902
– 1965)) Down The Mall [2:29]
Hoagy CARMICHAEL (1899 –
1981) Stardust (arranged by Percy FAITH
(1908 – 1976)) [3:12]
Eric COATES (1886 – 1957)
Footlights [4:11]
William WALTON (1902 – 1983)
Spitfire Fugue (from the film The First Of The Few) (1942) [4:07]
Wynford REYNOLDS: A Cocktail
Of Happiness [2:56]
Charles WILLIAMS (1893 –
1978) Girls In Grey [2:35]
Antonin DVORÁK (1841 – 1904)
Humoresque [2:34]
Albert ARLEN (1905 – 1993)
El Alamein – Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (1944) [7:45]
Sidney TORCH
(pseudonym for Sidney TORCHINSKY
(1908 – 1990)) On a Spring Note [2:51]
UNKNOWN: Boogie Woogie Moonshine
from the film Piccadilly Incident (1946) [3:41]
Jack BEAVER: Voice Of Industry
– March [2:45]
Robert FARNON (1917 – 2005)
Willie the Whistler [2:14]
George MELACHRINO
(1909 – 1965) Starlight Roof Waltz (1947)
[2:56]
Allan GRAY
(pseudonym for Josef ZMIGROD (1902 – 1973))
Prelude from the film A Matter of Life and Death (1946) [4:01]
Ronald HANMER
(1917 – 1974) Olympic Games March (1948) [2:57]
Edward WHITE (1910 – 1984)
The Fairy And The Fiddlers [3:26]
Frederic CURZON (1899 – 1973)
Bonaventure [2:55]
Louis ALTER (1902 – 1980)
American Serenade [4:09]
Leighton LUCAS (1903 – 1982)
Marche Fantastique [3:10]
Don GILLIS
(1912-1978) Short Overture To An Unwritten
Opera [4:07]
Albert William KETČLBEY (1875
– 1959) Royal Cavalcade [2:42]
Edward WARD (1900 – 1971)
Lullaby of the Bells – Piano Concerto from the film The Phantom
Of The Opera (1943) [5:55]
Percy Faith (Stardust), Leighton Lucas (Marche Fantastique),
Wynford Reynolds (A Cocktail of Happiness), David Rose (Humoresque),
Charles Shadwell (Down The Mall), Meredith Willson (American
Serenade) all conducting “his” Orchestra”; Henry Bronkhurst
(piano), Louis Levy and his Music from the Movies (Boogie Woogie
Moonshine); Peggy Cochrane (piano), Jack Payne and his Orchestra
(El Alamein); Guy Fletcher (piano), Mantovani and his Concert
Orchestra (Lullaby Of The Bells);
Hallé Orchestra/William Walton (Spitfire Fugue); Light Symphony
Orchestra/Eric Coates (Footlights); The Melachrino Orchestra/George
Melachrino (Starlight Roof Waltz); The New Century Orchestra/Sidney
Torch (Olympic Games March and Voice of Industry); The New Concert
Orchestra/Frederic Curzon (Bonaventure); The New Concert Orchestra/Rae
Jenkins (Short Overture); The New Concert Orchestra/Jay Wilbur
(The Fairy and the Fiddlers); Queen’s Hall Light Orchestra/Sidney
Torch (On A Spring Note); Queen’s Hall Light Orchestra/Charles
Williams (Girls In Grey. A Matter Of Life And Death and Willie
The Whistler); The Louis Voss Grand Orchestra (Royal Cavalcade)
See complete list of tracks and performes after the review.
