CLASSICS of BRITISH LIGHT MUSIC Elizabethan. Serenade. Including IN A PERSIAN MARKET KNIGHTSBRIDGE MARCH and WARSAW CONCERTO

Transcription

1 CLASSICS of BRITISH LIGHT MUSIC Elizabethan Serenade Including IN A PERSIAN MARKET KNIGHTSBRIDGE MARCH and WARSAW CONCERTO

2 RONALD BINGE ( ) Elizabethan Serenade 2 59 Patrick Thomas, conductor 2002 Australian Broadcasting Corporation ERIC COATES ( ) Knightsbridge March (from London Everyday) 4 30 West Australian Symphony Orchestra David Measham, conductor 1980 Australian Broadcasting Corporation EDWARD ELGAR ( ) Chanson de Matin, Op. 15 No West Australian Symphony Orchestra David Measham, conductor 1980 Australian Broadcasting Corporation FREDRICK ELLARD (fl ) arr. Richard Divall Lady O Connell (from The Australian Ladies) 1 33 State Orchestra of Victoria Richard Divall, conductor From the album Australia Unite! ABC Classics Australian Broadcasting Corporation Elizabethan Serenade Classics of British Light Music ALBERT KETÈLBEY ( ) In a Persian Market Intermezzo Scene 7 15 The New Symphony Orchestra and Chorus of London Robert Sharples, conductor From the album The World of Ketèlbey Decca Decca Music Group KENNETH ALFORD ( ) Colonel Bogey March 3 28 Australian Army Band, Perth Captain Craig Johnston, conductor From the album Strike Up The Band! ABC Classics Australian Broadcasting Corporation LESLIE STUART ( ) arr. William Motzing Soldiers of the Queen March 3 05 Australian Broadcasting Corporation Philharmonic Orchestra William Motzing, conductor From the album Australians At War ABC Classics Australian Broadcasting Corporation RON GOODWIN (b. 1925) 633 Squadron Main Theme 2 58 Australian Army Band, Perth Captain Craig Johnston, conductor From the album Strike Up The Band! ABC Classics Australian Broadcasting Corporation RICHARD ADDINSELL ( ) Warsaw Concerto 8 03 Isador Goodman, piano Melbourne Symphony Orchestra Patrick Thomas, conductor From the album Dangerous Moonlight ABC Classics Australian Broadcasting Corporation ERIC COATES The Man about Town (from The Three Men) Australian Broadcasting Corporation ARCHIBALD JOYCE ( ) arr. Alexander Belin Remembrance (Vospominanye) Waltz 4 16 Sydney Balalaika Orchestra Victor Serghie, director From the album Old Linden Tree ABC Classics Sydney Balalaika Orchestra ERIC COATES London Calling March Australian Broadcasting Corporation RON GOODWIN The Barbican Hornpipe (from Drake 400) 1 16 West Australian Symphony Orchestra David Measham, conductor 1986 Australian Broadcasting Corporation ERIC COATES Dancing Nights Concert Waltz Australian Broadcasting Corporation 2 3

3 RONALD HANMER ( ) Pastorale (Theme from Blue Hills) 4 24 Queensland Symphony Orchestra Ronald Hanmer, conductor 1992 Australian Broadcasting Corporation JOHN LENNON ( ) / PAUL MCCARTNEY (b. 1942) arr John Lanchbery From The Fool on the Hill Ballet Nudging Dance & Michelle Pas de Deux 3 34 The Yesterday Concerto 7 45 Isador Goodman, piano ( ) 1976 Australian Broadcasting Corporation Total playing time Like the rest of Europe Britain s honourable tradition of light music had its modern beginnings in the late nineteenth century under the patronage of upper-class hotels, resorts and spas. Then, and for reasons not fully known and some say polite English society s disdain for overt public display of emotion matched light music s gentle sidestepping of profundity the proliferation of British light music outstripped its Continental counterparts. Kenneth Young s book Music s Great Days in the Spas and Watering Places has delightful accounts of the role light orchestras, known also as salon orchestras or palm court orchestras, played in such gathering places. As the tradition continued into the twentieth century, it became one of the rare modes of lucrative employment for musicians. In the 1920s the famous restaurant chain Lyons reputedly spent 150,000 every year on their orchestras, and gave rise to novelties like all-women groups (the Oxford Street restaurant employed violinist Margaret Holloway to lead its Ladies Orchestra). A striking measure of the popularity and hence lucrative nature of light music is the fact that a couple of its leaders could afford Stradivarius instruments. The Piccadilly Hotel Dance band, in residence at the Piccadilly Grill Room, made so many recordings that its director David de Groot could afford a Strad violin. Similarly the beloved Tom Jenkins, leader of the Palm Court Orchestra in the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) radio programme Grand Hotel, would sometimes play his 1667 Stradivarius during his broadcasts, which spanned the 1930s to the 1950s. During this time in fact the BBC dedicated more broadcast hours to light music than classical music (reportedly twice as many on the National Programme and three times on the Regional Programmes), employed eight full-time light orchestras, and put on an annual festival of light music at its new complex on London s South Bank. No doubt this proliferation of light music and light music orchestras has to do with not just the disbanding of symphony orchestras during World War II but also the fact that excellent musicians from military bands and orchestras, including the highlyregarded Royal Air Force Symphony Orchestra, needed to find employment after the war. As we shall see, there are interesting connections between British light music and war, particularly war films and the cinema. In fact Ronald Binge, one of light music s most gifted composers, began his career as a cinema organist, a job he turned to when his family was left in poor finances following the death of his pianist father from World War I injuries. That was the heyday of the silent film, and most cinemas had not just an organist but a light orchestra that played standard set film pieces (generic pieces with titles like Heartbreak Melody for that inevitable moment in the film) as well as snippets from the classical and opera repertoire. These snippets required original arrangements for light orchestras, which Binge made. This was the process by which he learned the craft of orchestration. And so when in 1935 he began his association with Mantovani, that doyen of light music conductors, he was well placed to fulfil the task of making all the arrangements for Mantovani s Tipica Orchestra. Binge invented the now-famous sound of cascading strings of the orchestra, in effect an ingenious device of notating simulated reverberation into the musical composition by assigning essentially different durations for each individual string player. As a composer, Binge often wished people would forget his innovations for Mantovani and remember his original works. One of these which became not just his most famous piece but also the most famous piece of British light music was written to keep his rather insatiable publisher happy. Walter Eastman of the firm Ascherberg. 4 5

4 Hopwood and Crew was very pleased with this piece that Binge called simply Andante cantabile. Upon hearing Mantovani s broadcast performance of it, Eastman telephoned Binge and said, That s what I call a tune! I think we ve got something here. Damned if I know what you re going to call it. Sounds like some kind of Elizabethan serenade. And so was born Andante cantabile s new name: Elizabethan Serenade. In an obituary for Eric Coates, the BBC called him the uncrowned king of light music. Few light music composers have been able to match the effortless panache and sophistication of his compositions. In some ways, Coates style comes from the light music of Edward Elgar, but if Elgar s light music describes imperial Britain (the Imperial March and Pomp and Circumstance marches come to mind), Coates light music is more about day-to-day and wartime concerns, with titles like Calling All Workers (written to recognise workers contribution during the Blitz), The Eighth Army March, Over to You (dedicated to aircraft pilots and workers) and Salute the Soldier. These war connections become strongest in his most famous march, written for the war movie The Dam Busters. A gifted violist who played under Beecham in opera and theatre orchestras, he joined Henry Wood s Queen s Hall Orchestra in 1910 and was soon promoted to principal viola, only to be dismissed by Wood in 1919 for missing too many rehearsal and concerts (Coates would send a deputy; incidentally Coates chronic neuropathy must also have contributed to his absenteeism); by then his career as a composer was taking up a lot of his time. The work that really made Coates reputation was his march Knightsbridge, the third and last movement of his suite London Everyday or simply London Suite. Played much more often than the other two movements (the tarantella Covent Garden and the meditation Westminster ), it was heard or overheard, in fact, as Coates was recording it for the Columbia label by a BBC producer looking for something to use as appropriate theme music for a new show called In Town Tonight. In both title and content, the march from the London Suite was absolutely right. After its first broadcast thousands of requests flooded the BBC for the name of this music. The same urban and gallant sophistication can be heard in the stand-alone march London Calling and in The Man about Town, again one movement from a suite of three called The Three Men (incidentally, the other two movements allow Coates to set sophistication aside for more rustic and nautical flavours in The Man from the Country and The Man from the Sea, complete with folksongs and hornpipes). In Dancing Nights, however, we hear another side of Coates and a talent that is somewhat rare in light music the ability to sustain a large-scale form. The concert waltz Dancing Nights is something between a long single movement and a short tone-poem, and Coates wrote many of these, including The Seven Dwarfs (which was renamed The Enchanted Garden after Disney released its film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs) and the delightfully vivid Cinderella. It may be of interest to learn that Coates and his wife Phyllis were keen dancers and the waltz of Dancing Nights shows an influence of the syncopated dance rhythms of the 1920s. It might be odd to see Edward Elgar s name amongst a collection of light music composers, but Elgar did compose a substantial amount of light music influencing subsequent generations. In fact, it is often observed that Elgar completed nothing after the Cello Concerto in 1919, but the truth is that he wrote a considerable amount of light music from then to 1934 amongst this are the fifth Pomp and Circumstance march, the Severn Suite, Arthur and Beau Brummell. Much of this is little heard today, not even his Wand of Youth suites of which he was so fond. Chanson de Matin, showing Elgar at his light music best, became even more popular after it made a brief appearance in Richard Rodney Bennett s score for the film Enchanted April. Many Australian connections with British light music can be found on this CD, the earliest dating back to colonial times. It is a well-known story that the Irish composer William Ellard reputedly wrote the first pieces to be composed in Australia: the Australian Quadrilles with fanciful names like La Sydney and La Woolloomooloo. But less well-known is the fact that his brother Fredrick became a publisher in Sydney and was a very prolific composer. Each piece in his Australian Ladies collection was named after a prominent woman in colonial Sydney, the Lady O Connell of our selection being the daughter of the one and only Captain William Bligh of the Bounty. Incidentally doubt has to be cast on the authenticity of his brother s Quadrilles being composed in Australia, as it appears William drowned on voyage to Australia; William possibly wrote them based on Fredrick s fond descriptions of Sydney. Arguably Ronald Hanmer s music is more famous in Australia than his native Britain. Or, to be precise, his one piece Pastorale has made him more famous in Australia than in Britain. Like Ronald Binge, he started his career playing cinema organ 6 7

5 and found work making arrangements for light orchestras. Then in about 1947 he started writing what was called Mood music for the library of Francis, Day & Hunter and later for the famous Chappell Recorded Music Library. Mood music was the original term for what became known as production music. Started by British publishers (including De Wolfe, Bosworth and Boosey & Hawkes) and Hollywood music scoring services in the 1950s, mood music libraries provided cues to underscore film and television shows which could not afford to commission original compositions. The libraries simply charged a single-use fee (nick-named the needle-drop fee) or a blanket license to use as many tunes as the producers wanted within a production. The Chappell library quickly became the industry leader. One of the pieces that Hanmer wrote was Pastorale, meant to be a depiction of the English countryside, and in its original recording came complete with an English cuckoo and the tolling of an English church bell. In 1948 producers at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation were browsing through the Chappell library for an appropriate theme to use for its new radio drama series called Blue Hills, and hit upon Pastorale. Its expansive theme and spaciousness made it perfect for this rustic country drama. By 1976, when Blue Hills finally ended after a staggering 27-year run, Pastorale s original name was forgotten, it having become known as the Blue Hills theme, so much so that Hanmer made an expanded version and called it Blue Hills Rhapsody. As an interesting Australian epilogue, Hanmer retired in 1975 to Brisbane, but within a couple of years had started up a light orchestra there. He made the new recording of Pastorale presented here in 1992 with the Queensland Symphony Orchestra and no cuckoos or church bells. Another example of a piece promoted to fame through its use by the Australian entertainment industry is the song Soldiers of the Queen by Leslie Stuart (the nom d artist of Thomas Augustine Barrett). Though it was already quite celebrated, Soldiers of the Queen, in the forms of both a song sung by Edward Woodward and a military march, reached a new audience by being featured in the landmark Australian film about the Boer War, Breaker Morant. Leslie Stuart was also an organist, but for the church rather than cinema, and held posts at Salford Cathedral and at the Church of the Holy Name in Manchester. Stuart wrote many music-hall songs and musical comedy plays but he never was able to duplicate the success of Soldiers of the Queen, which was so popular it was even recorded by Noel Coward. The connection between British light music and war films continues with three more examples. It was quite appropriate for the World War II epic Bridge over the River Kwai to feature Kenneth Alford s march Colonel Bogey. Alford (nom d artist for Frederic Joseph Ricketts), a bandmaster appointed to the second Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, became the Royal Marines music director in Colonel Bogey was written during World War I and, as the title would imply, was inspired by a game of golf. Instead of shouting fore, Alford s partner apparently would whistle the notes C and A. The war romance film Dangerous Moonlight, also released under the name Suicide Squadron, centres around a Polish airman who was also a concert pianist. The story goes that Rachmaninov and then Mischa Spolianksy were offered the job of scoring the film but both declined. Nonetheless, the Rachmaninov sound was part of the conception of the producers and so Richard Addinsell, a highly talented classically-trained composer who was making a living from incidental music to plays, revues and films, produced a concerto in the Rachmaninov style, which became known as the Warsaw Concerto. Interestingly, the lovely and lyrical second theme is a slowed-down version of a rumba that Addinsell wrote while studying law at Oxford. The last of our war film themes is the title march for the 1964 film 633 Squadron, the story of the 1944 Mosquito squadron s mission to destroy a munitions factory in German-occupied Norway by bombing the cliff overhanging it. Ron Goodwin has been a prolific film composer, having also written for Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines and the Miss Marple series. Those with an analytic bent will notice that the theme of 633 Squadron is cleverly grouped in rhythms of 6 and 3. In his later years Goodwin also wrote many major works for the concert hall. To commemorate the 400th anniversary of the voyage around the world of Sir Francis Drake, Goodwin was commissioned by the City Council of Plymouth, his hometown, to write a piece, the result being the six-movement suite Drake 400 (the sixth is a reprise of the first). From Drake 400 we hear the lively hornpipe movement called The Barbican. Just as no light music collection can be without Eric Coates, similarly the perfumed music of Albert Ketèlbey also must make an appearance. In a Persian Market is typical of this atypical composer it has the exotic 8 8 9

6 Orientalism he was so fond of, colourful and ornate orchestrations and, in the end, wholly English melody, most apparent here in its lyrical second theme. Ketèlbey was well aware that he was classed as a light music, and hence a lightweight, composer. In defence of light music, if it ever needed defending, he said, One grows tired of the intolerant attitude of the Highbrows towards light music. One would think that a good dinner may only consist of dry bread and solid beef. Don t they ever try a sweet? In a Persian Market is such a sweet, a tonepoem complete with camels laden with goods (the jingling music at the very beginning), street beggars (the chorus crying Baksheesh or money ), a beautiful princess (the afore-mentioned second theme) and so on. This performance is a classic early recording by the New Symphony Orchestra of London conducted by Robert Sharples. The same kind of Orientalism is also found in the music of Archibald Joyce (witness his suite Caravan) and this is why the Sydney Balalaika Orchestra have chosen to transcribe his famous waltz Remembrance, with its gypsy-style theme, for Russian instruments. Joyce had his own light orchestra that toured the country, performing in hotels and garden parties. Inspired by the Strauss dynasty, Joyce wrote medley waltzes based on both his own tunes and popular works of the day, but he wanted to create a smoother alternative to the upbeat Viennese waltz. Legend has it that Remembrance was played on the Titanic, and furthermore his Songe d Automne (Autumn Dream) was the very last piece played before the ocean liner sank. We close our CD with the logical destination of light music popular music. In 1975, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, capitalising on the still relatively new phenomenon of colour television, collaborated with The Australian Ballet to produce a ballet for the masses to deliberately create a ballet that non-ballet fans would watch and enjoy. They hit upon the idea of basing a scenario around hit songs by the British supergroup The Beatles, including Sgt Pepper s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Michelle, Yesterday and of course The Fool on the Hill which became the title of the resulting production. Amongst the many musicians involved were the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and the legendary English ballet conductor and arranger, John Lanchbery, who by then already had a long history of collaboration with The Australian Ballet. Lanchbery made orchestral arrangements out of the songs, not direct transcriptions but transformations of the melodies to form the backbone of the balletic story. From this score we hear two excerpts: Nudging Dance & Michelle Pas de Deux (beginning with a Gershwin-like number then a glorious, shimmering unfolding of the Michelle melody) and The Yesterday Concerto, a wistful, one-movement piano concerto based on Yesterday written for the famous pianist Isador Goodman to play. Combining the traditions of pop music and classical music, this is the nicest of sweets to have after our journey through British light music. Ketèlbey would have been proud. Lyle Chan Executive Producers Robert Patterson, Lyle Chan Product Manager Anna-Lisa Whiting Mastering Oscar Gaona / Studios 301 Design Imagecorp Pty Ltd ABC Classics would like to thank Owen Chambers (ABC Classic FM), Jonathon Bird and Stephen Green (Decca Music Group) for their kind assistance with this project. This compilation 2002 Australian Broadcasting Corporation Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Distributed in Australasia by Universal Classics & Jazz, a division of Universal Music Group, under exclusive licence. Made in Australia. All rights of the owner of copyright reserved. Any copying, renting, lending, diffusion, public performance or broadcast of this record without the authority of the copyright owner is prohibited