Performer: Andrew Vinter
Orchestra: Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Conductor: Paul Murphy, Gavin Sutherland
Format: FLAC (tracks)
Label: Naxos
Catalogue: 8570332
Release: 2007
Size: 393 MB
Recovery: +3%
Scan: yes
01. Vaughan Williams: Sea Songs
02. Mayerl: Marigold
03. Vinter: Waltzing with Sullivan
04. Coates: Sound and Vision: ATV March
05. Spiegl: Radio 4 UK Theme
06. Richardson: Holiday Spirit (Children’s Television Newsreel, Friday Night Is Music Night)
07. Safroni: Imperial Echoes (BBC Radio Newsreel, CBC Night News Bulletin)
08. Slaney: Top Dog (The Men from the Ministry)
09. Joyce: A Thousand Kisses (The Gold Rush)
10. Phillips: Parisian Mode (What’s My Line?)
11. Watters: Willow Waltz (The World of Tim Fraser)
12. Slaney: Non-Stop (ITV News Bulletin)
13. Melachrino: Winter Sunshine
14. Hill-Bowen: Paris Promenade
15. Hill-Bowen: Paris Metro
Bath: Out of the Blue
16. “Marine 4-Step or Eva 3-Step” (BBC Sports Report)
17. Hope: Barnacle Bill (Blue Peter)
18. Langford: A Little French Suite: Galop
Phillips: Dance Revels
19. I. Mazurka
20. II. Minuet
21. III. Valse
22. Dankworth: Widespread World (Rediffusion London Call Sign)
The primary audience for this disc will be located in Britain, where the music will all have the distinctive half-familiarity of television and radio themes, but even non-British listeners can have a good time with the music. The situation in Britain was different from in America, where by the 1950s a good deal of music written for television had been stamped by popular idioms. Here, although a few pieces were written specifically for broadcast purposes and a few others came from the vast libraries of stock themes employed by British broadcasters, most of the music had an independent existence prior to being attached to a specific broadcast show. American television producers also drew on preexisting music, of course (it’s hard, if you’re of a certain age, not to think of Chet Huntley when you hear the scherzo of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9), but not to the same extent. Thus the album includes music by such famed figures as Ralph Vaughan Williams and Eric Coates in addition to composers more closely associated with British light music genres. Marches, waltzes, and related locomotive genres are well represented on the program, and listeners interested in knowing what they’re getting into here can sample the sprightly but circumspect Out of the Blue March, track 16, by Hubert Bath. It wasn’t intended as the theme for a television sports program, but that’s what it became. Why? It has the qualities that television music still has today: it’s both interesting enough and deferential enough that if you hear it day in and day out it begins to seem like an old friend rather than making you tired of it. Almost all the music on the disc has this quality, which should give British listeners a trip down memory lane and provide non-Britons with pleasant listening that may also illuminate some of the wasys classical music found its way into vernacular musical life in the last century. The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Paul Murphy and Gavin Sutherland plays with a slightly sentimental enthusiasm that’s entirely appropriate to the circumstances, and the studio recording avoids a big concert-hall sound that could have stultified the music. Recommended to anyone Anglo or just anglophilic.