[ Hyperion / 4 CD ]
Release Date: Tuesday 24 October 2006
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"All the works are performed with spirit and verve, and a real love and understanding of this music. A superb set." (MusicWeb April 2009)
'Prestigiously presented and well thought through. Golden nostalgia with fidelity to a long departed but by many still cherished past. Riches indeed!' (MusicWeb International)
"British light music reigned on radio and in the concert halls from the 1920s until the 1960s and then waned ... suffering an apparently terminal illness. The lowest point came when the BBC axed the mid-afternoon hour's slot - known as Matinée Musicale on Radio 3. Matinée Musicale had become the ghetto for studio concerts of light music recorded by the BBC Concert Orchestra and conducted at first by Stanford Robinson and then by Ashley Lawrence. The end came in the early 1980s.
Coates and Ketèlbey were survivors of a once flourishing two or three generations. They enjoyed a scant survival in the LP catalogue but in greybeard recordings. All was not lost. The launch of a new recording medium (the CD) seems to have been the salvation for the genre - and of others too. Klaus Heymann's Marco Polo label launched a series each featuring a different British light music composer. The sessions took place in the Czech Republic where recording costs were lower. Coates and Ketèlbey each had a disc and more but then so did Curzon, Haydn Wood and about twenty others. ASV followed and by the mid-1990s other labels (though not the majors) were making a significant impact with British light music.
The present Hyperion series was different. It began in 1995 and came to volume 4 by 2002. The orchestra and conductor were English and the style was exactly comme il faut. There was no attempt to reinvent the genre and tempi and balance were close to the well-loved originals as used for signature tunes and the like. The recording values were typically exemplary. Hyperion are industriously down pricing and imaginatively repackaging much of its long established catalogue and the listener is the beneficiary. That's certainly the case here. Here are the four discs all still available separately at full price yet now to be purchased together for less than half price."
(MusicWeb Oct 2006)
77 tracks of golden nostalgia on 4 compact discs
including the music made famous as the signature tunes to Music While You Work, The Secret Garden, Dick Barton- Special Agent, Children's Favourites, Jennings at School, the Paul Temple detective series, In Town Tonight, The Archers, Down Your Way, Dr Finlay's Casebook, Television Newsreel, Housewives' Choice, My Word, Top of the Form, BBC Morning Music, Desert Island Discs, BBC Farming, The Barlows of Beddington …
with music by 45 composers, including Charles Ancliffe, Ronald Binge, Ernest Bucalossi, Eric Coates, Frederic Curzon, Robert Farnon, Herman Finck, Albert W Ketèlbey, Lionel Monckton, Gilbert Vinter & Charles Williams
CD1 [76:53]
Eric COATES Calling All Workers [3:20]
Geoffrey TOYE The Haunted Ballroom [8:15]
Anthony COLLINS Vanity Fair [3:53]
Robert FARNON Jumping Bean [2:24]
Sydney BAYNES Destiny [8:29]
Frederic CURZON The Boulevardier [3:55]
W Meyer LUTZ Pas de quatre [3:39]
Ronald BINGE The Watermill (with Ruth Scott, oboe) [3:45]
Charles WILLIAMS The Devil's Galop [3:12]
Armstrong GIBBS Dusk [6:07]
Edward WHITE Puffin' Billy [3:40]
Albert W KETÈLBEY Bells Across the Meadows [4:40]
Charles WILLIAMS The Old Clockmaker [3:12]
Archibald JOYCE Dreaming [6:04]
Ronald BINGE Elizabethan Serenade [3:20]
Vivian ELLIS Coronation Scot [2:57]
Charles ANCLIFFE Nights of Gladness [5:39]
CD2 [76:25]
Eric COATES Knightsbridge March from London Suite [4:34]
Percy FLETCHER Bal Masqué: Valse-Caprice: [6:35]
Ernest BUCALOSSI The Grasshopper's Dance [4:10]
Arthur WOOD Barwick Green - A Maypole Dance from My Native Heath [3:20]
Fred HARTLEY Rouge et Noir [2:46]
Robert FARNON The Peanut Polka [2:56]
Benjamin FRANKEL Carriage and Pair [2:49]
Haydn WOOD The Horse Guards, Whitehall from London Landmarks [3:50]
'Trevor DUNCAN' March from A Little Suite [3:18]
Ronald BINGE Sailing By [2:50]
Gilbert VINTER Portuguese Party [3:19]
Clive RICHARDSON Beachcomber [3:13]
Herman FINCK In the Shadows [5:54]
Robert DOCKER Tabarinage [3:28]
Albert W KETÈLBEY Sanctuary of the Heart 'Méditation réligieuse' [4:50]
Robert FARNON The Westminster Waltz [2:58]
Edward ELGAR Carissima [3:41]
Charles WILLIAMS Girls in Grey [2:38]
Edward WHITE The Runaway Rocking-Horse [3:59]
Frederic CURZON March of the Bowmen from Robin Hood Suite [4:42]
CD3 [78:45]
Haydn WOOD Montmartre [3:47]
Clive RICHARDSON, arr HANMER Melody on the Move [2:42]
Jack STRACHEY In Party Mood [4:01]
Trevor DUNCAN The Girl from Corsica [4:37]
Lionel MONCKTON Soldiers in the Park [3:51]
Felix GODIN, arr Adolf LOTTER Valse Septembre [5:22]
Ronald BINGE Miss Melanie [2:25]
Ivan CARYLL Pink Lady Waltz [5:25]
Robert FARNON Portrait of a Flirt [2:44]
Harry DEXTER Siciliano [4:37]
Albert KETÈLBEY In a Persian Market [6:15]
Jack STRACHEY Theatreland [3:19]
Archibald JOYCE Songe d'Automne [4:46]
Vivian ELLIS, arr Sidney TORCH Alpine Pastures [3:40]
Ernest TOMLINSON Little Serenade [3:31]
George MELACHRINO Woodland Revel [3:10]
Tolchard EVANS, arr Fred HARTLEY/Ken WARNER Lady of Spain [3:02]
Charles ANCLIFFE Smiles, then Kisses [4:26]
Sidney TORCH On a Spring Note [2:31]
Eric COATES Music Everywhere ('Rediffusion March' [3:20]
CD4 [77:58]
'Marshall ROSS' Marching Strings [2:45]
Peter HOPE Jaunting Car from The Ring of Kerry [2:46]
'Trevor DUNCAN' High Heels [3:13]
Frederic CURZON Dance of an Ostracised Imp [3:21]
John FOULDS Keltic Lament from A Keltic Suite Op. 29 † [4:14]
Charles WILLIAMS Rhythm on Rails [2:47]
Eric COATES By the Sleepy Lagoon [4:03]
Arthur BENJAMIN Jamaican Rumba [2:06]
Albert W KETÈLBEY In a Monastery Garden [5:53]
Charles WILLIAMS A Quiet Stroll [2:55]
Percy FLETCHER Demoiselle Chic - Parisian Sketches No 1 [3:59]
Jack BEAVER Cavalcade of Youth [3:40]
Fredric BAYCO Elizabethan Masque * [2:16]
Henry BALFOUR GARDINER Shepherd Fennel's Dance [5:31]
Charles ANCLIFFE Thrills [6:04]
Frederick ROSSE The Doge's March from The Merchant of Venice [4:55]
Samuel COLERIDGE-TAYLOR Petite Suite de Concert Op. 77: La caprice de Nanette [4:00]; Demande et réponse [4:56]; Un sonnet d'amour [4:01]; La tarantelle frétillante [2:23]