Holst: St Paul's Suite, Op. 29 No. 2: Dargason

With the sublime The Lark Ascending as its centrepiece, this collection illustrates the way that Vaughan Williams and his contemporaries expressed their national identity, drawing inspiration from folk song, landscape, poetry and the rich history of British music. With favourites by Elgar, Delius, Butterworth and Walton––including Elgar’s unforgettable Introduction and Allegro and Delius’s Summer Night on the River––the works gathered here are romantic, nostalgic and quintessentially British.

These discs present a rich and varied flavour of Britain’s capital city. Offering a diverse and wide-ranging taste of music spanning over three centuries, the pieces on this compilation are evocative of London in all its glory, whether that be light musical cameos of famous locations, to the archetypal Coronation Anthems of Handel and the eponymous symphonies of Haydn and Vaughan Williams. This 2-CD set contains music by some of Britain’s most popular native and adopted composers. The first disc on this compilation offers a nostalgic trip back through British light music, easily recognized for its emphasis on instantly accessible and catchy melodies. Tracks include the popular Yeoman of the Guard overture by Arthur Sullivan, as well as extracts from the London Suites by Dam Busters composer Eric Coates and Dankworth’s Rediffusion London Call Sign. The second disc comprises more traditional pieces, ranging from delicate lute arrangements of Henry VIII’s attributed ditty Greensleeves to Walton’s joyous coronation march Crown Imperial.

This collection has been prepared with three main aims: firstly to prove that the so-called boundaries between light and classical music are not as insurmountable as some people seem to imagine; secondly to illustrate that many composers, who may usually be associated with more serious works, also had their lighter moments; and thirdly to offer several examples of the tasteful way in which arrangers of the 20th century adapted the classics to make them more instantly appealing to their audience. For many years such ‘tampering with the classics’ was banned by the BBC in Britain, although commercial recordings could be freely purchased. However a lack of broadcasts obviously affected sales, which partly explains why such recordings were more common in the United States than in Britain. Among the leading US musicians who often strayed into classical territory were David Carroll, Andre Kostelanetz, Percy Faith, Clebanoff and even Ray Conniff. They are joined by Charles Williams, Angela Morley and other familiar figures on the UK scene.