Box of Delights
The title says it all: light music rarities revived in spry and sympathetic fashion
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, (Agnes) Elisabeth Lutyens, Granville Bantock, Phyllis (Margaret) Tate, Cecil Armstrong Gibbs
Genre:
Orchestral
Label: Lyrita
Magazine Review Date: 8/2007
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 72
Mastering:
Stereo
DDD
Catalogue Number: SRCD214

Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
London Fields |
Phyllis (Margaret) Tate, Composer
Barry Wordsworth, Conductor London Philharmonic Orchestra Phyllis (Margaret) Tate, Composer |
(4) Characteristic Waltzes, Movement: Valse de la reine |
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Composer
Barry Wordsworth, Conductor London Philharmonic Orchestra Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Composer |
Three-Fours, Movement: A flat |
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Composer
Barry Wordsworth, Conductor London Philharmonic Orchestra Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Composer |
Three-Fours, Movement: E flat |
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Composer
Barry Wordsworth, Conductor London Philharmonic Orchestra Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Composer |
Russian Scenes |
Granville Bantock, Composer
Barry Wordsworth, Conductor Granville Bantock, Composer London Philharmonic Orchestra |
Fancy dress |
Cecil Armstrong Gibbs, Composer
Cecil Armstrong Gibbs, Composer Royal Philharmonic Orchestra Simon Joly, Conductor |
(En) Voyage |
(Agnes) Elisabeth Lutyens, Composer
(Agnes) Elisabeth Lutyens, Composer Royal Philharmonic Orchestra Simon Joly, Conductor |
Author: Andrew Achenbach
Phyllis Tate’s London Fields was commissioned for the BBC’s Light Music Festival of 1958 and makes a disarming opener, the cor anglais assigned the sweetest of melodies in the third movement (“St James’s Park – A Lakeside Reverie”). Next come three offerings by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor: the slinky “Valse de reine” comprises the third of of his Four Characteristic Waltzes from 1899 and it’s followed by two similarly graceful and touchingly tender numbers (orchestrated by Norman O’Neill) from the 1909 waltz suite Three-fours.
That Granville Bantock knew and loved his Tchaikovsky is amply demonstrated by his Russian Scenes (1899), though, as annotator Lewis Foreman rightly observes, it’s the spirit of Borodin’s Prince Igor that propels the boisterous concluding “Cossack Dance”. The fragrant waltz (“Dusk”) from Cecil Armstrong Gibbs’s 1935 dance suite Fancy Dress made the composer’s name back in the 1940s and ’50s, but the rest of the work proves an endearing find – as, for that matter, does Elisabeth Lutyens’s En voyage (1944), a tuneful and deftly scored four-movement suite depicting a journey by train and boat from London to Paris.
Undemanding, consistently enjoyable listening, then. The recorded sound has the amplitude, warmth and realism one associates with this label.
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