SUCH PLEASING WORK, YET SO FEW CHAMPIONS
The recent controversy surrounding the “lightening up” of Radio 3 has highlighted a phenomenon hitherto ignored by broadcasting bigwigs, that of the popularity among listeners of what we are pleased to call “light music”. In the halcyon days of the Light Programme, music by the likes of Eric Coates, Robert Farnon, Ernest Tomlinson and Trevor Duncan could be heard on a regular basis, but with the demise of such programmes as Your Hundred Best Tunes, These You Have Loved and Melodies for You the entire canon of “popular classics” has disappeared from the BBC and has been snapped up by Classic FM. Good for them. Now I have to confess a vested interest here, for every Saturday morning you can hear me on Classic FM between 9am and noon, playing a varied selection of music, among which popular classics, including works by all the above – and that other neglected genre, operetta – are regularly given an airing. It is sad that such pleasing work has so few champions but then there is little intellectual kudos to be gained from saying that you are a fan of Franz Lehár or Ronald Binge, Lionel Monckton or Vivian Ellis. Yet their melodies are tuneful and uplifting. Two conductors in particular deserve praise for keeping the genre alive — Ronald Corp and Iain Sutherland. While neither may be a household name, they have both made recordings of light classics that are still capable of lifting the spirits. And it was in childhood that such tunes first made their way into the consciousness of my generation, courtesy of Derek McCulloch – Uncle Mac – and Children’s Favourites every Saturday morning. The show’s signature tune, Puffing Billy, heralded the start of a programme that, as well as playing Max Bygraves singing You’re a Pink Toothbrush and Burl Ives giving us I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly, introduced children to The Typewriter by Leroy Anderson, Hugo Alfvén’s Swedish Rhapsody and Eric Coates’s Knightsbridge March. The British Light Music Classics Series from Hyperion consists of four CDs with gems by the likes of Coates, Charles Williams and Gilbert Vinter played by the New London Concert Orchestra conducted by Ronald Corp. There is little call for such compositions to be written today (they would compete poorly in the charts with Florence and the Machine and Mike + the Mechanics), except in one particular area – music for film and television. It is here that there are rich pickings to be had if you enjoy tuneful music, which, to those who revere Schoenberg and Ligeti, Philip Glass and Harrison Birtwistle will be anathema. But I generalise unfairly – I enjoy some of Richard Strauss’s music every bit as much as that of the two Johanns, depending on my mood and the time of day. Of current composers, seek out the work of Adrian Johnston, especially the delightful soundtrack of that film that starred Anne Hathaway, Becoming Jane, and Patrick Doyle, whose music for Emma Thompson’s adaptation of Sense and Sensibility is a delicious masterpiece. Carl Davis is a man whose prolific output seems to show no signs of slowing down. It was he who was charged with composing music to accompany Colin Firth’s wet shirt in the television adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, and his music for Cranford is enjoyable too. Debbie Wiseman, Rachel Portman and Howard Goodall (composer of The Vicar of Dibley version of The Lord is My Shepherd) are stalwarts of screen soundtracks, and Nigel Hess’s music for Ladies in Lavender, Charles Dance’s film starring the two dames, Judi Dench and Maggie Smith, is a brilliant showcase for the violin virtuoso Joshua Bell. Christopher Ball gets less airtime than he deserves, not only as an accomplished contemporary composer, but also as an arranger of such delights as The Lark in the Clear Air, which I defy you not to be cheered and uplifted by. Christopher Gunning ( Poirot and Middlemarch) and Jim Parker ( Midsomer Murders, Foyle’s War and The House of Eliot) have contributed immeasurably to the success of the television series for which they composed the signature tunes ( Ground Force was one), following in the footsteps of old stalwarts like Johnny Pearson ( All Creatures Great and Small) and Ronnie Hazlehurst ( Last of the Summer Wine, To the Manor Born and Yes Minister), while many natural history series have been enhanced by the work of George Fenton, who has frequently worked with Alan Bennett, having met the playwright when appearing as a schoolboy in Forty Years On back in the late Sixties. Before taking up with nature he composed the theme tunes for Bergerac and Shoestring. Remember them? The one disadvantage of music composed for film and television is that the compositions themselves tend to be short and the incidental music, designed to accompany the action, can be somewhat amorphous without the accompanying visual images. This makes the purchase of film and television music a hit and miss affair. There is no shortage of “blockbuster” film music by the likes of John Williams and John Barry, but gentler, “Britishsounding” fare is worth championing too, even though some of the composers are not from these shores. The lists I offer below are soundtracks that give me especial pleasure and which I find myself playing again and again. Film: Miss Potter – Nigel Westlake; Ladies in Lavender – Nigel Hess; Sense and Sensibility – Patrick Doyle; Pride & Prejudice – Dario Marianelli; Becoming Jane – Adrian Johnston; Young Victoria – Ilan Eshkeri; Gosford Park – Patrick Doyle; Emma – Rachel Portman. Television: Brideshead Revisited – Geoffrey Burgon; Pride and Prejudice – Carl Davis; Cranford – Carl Davis; The Blue Planet – George Fenton; Downton Abbey – John Lunn; Emma – Samuel Sim; Foyle’s War – Jim Parker; Agatha Christie’s Poirot – Christopher Gunning
Asked why she declined to make packed lunches for her husband to take to work, a friend of my wife’s confessed that when they were first married she made an error that had led to him preferring to buy his midday repast at the local sandwich shop. Anxious to please, in addition to a couple of filled rolls, she had made him a scotch egg. As the husband bit into this appetising comestible, he discovered his new wife’s mistake. She had omitted to remove the shell. The memory is such that he has not touched a scotch egg since.