Box of Delights

The title says it all: light music rarities revived in spry and sympathetic fashion

Record and Artist Details

Composer or Director: Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, (Agnes) Elisabeth Lutyens, Granville Bantock, Phyllis (Margaret) Tate, Cecil Armstrong Gibbs

Genre:

Orchestral

Label: Lyrita

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
Lyrita fans will recognise the three tracks from the 20 here that tantalisingly appeared on a sampler CD in 1993. The booklet now discloses that the original sessions in fact took place as long ago as 1988-89 – but there can be no quibbles with the superior production values achieved by the (then Decca) team of Andrew Cornall and John Dunkerley. Performances, too, are most persuasive, with Barry Wordsworth and Simon Joly drawing some agreeably polished and bright-eyed playing from the LPO and RPO respectively.

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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