For those of a mature
age, this album will recall many memories
from long ago. How well I remember,
as a boy, in the late 1940s, rushing
through my homework to enjoy every thrill-packed
moment of BBC Radio’s week-nightly thriller
Dick Barton, Special Agent. Charles
Williams’s super-charged Devil’s
Galop, that cliff-hanger serial’s
theme tune, added an extra degree of
tense excitement. The BBC Concert Orchestra’s
rousing performance is just one of 24
treasures that make up this first class
compilation.
Charles Williams was
born Isaac Cozerbreit in London’s East
End, the son of an itinerant synagogue
cantor who, as an operatic and choral
soloist, performed under the name of
‘Charles Williams’. This Charles showed
early promise, won a scholarship to
the Royal Academy of Music and adopted
his father’s professional name in 1915.
He played in theatre and symphony orchestras
becoming leader of the New Symphony
Orchestra as well as playing and recording
under Sir Landon Ronald, Beecham and
Elgar. In 1929 he began a fruitful association
with the rapidly developing world of
the cinema, contributing to the score
of the first British sound film, Blackmail.
As Anthony M. Clayden says, in his
informative notes, "Sometimes he
would be credited as in The Way to
the Stars, as the conductor only,
when in fact he wrote all but one six-note
phrase!"
Through the 1940s,
1950s, and into the 1960s Williams was
hard at work writing themes for cinema
and TV newsreels (often stuff used as
library material) and for radio, and
TV series.
From the typically
escapist/romantic British films of the
1940s, the album includes: the exceedingly
popular ‘Denham Concerto’, The
Dream of Olwen, from the film
While I Live; the tenderly
romantic theme from the wartime thriller
The Night Has Eyes starring
James Mason; and another sweetly romantic
melody called Throughout the
Years that came from a forgotten
post-war drama, Flesh and Blood.
One of Williams’s best-loved melodies,
Jealous Lover, originally used
for another British film, The Romantic
Age (1949) starring Mai Zetterling
and Petula Clark, was used again in
the very popular American film The
Apartment (1960) starring Jack Lemmon
and Shirley MacLaine. Here Roderick
Elms and the BBC Concert Orchestra realise
a most affecting performance – just
one of the many highlights of this disc.
From the world of early
1950s television there is the wonderful
rousing march Girls in Grey originally
written for the Women’s Junior Air Corps
during World War II but adapted as the
signature tune for BBC Television Newsreel;
and a number of those interlude themes
(most of TV was ‘live’ in those days
and intervals were a necessary part
of the daily schedules) including Williams’s
Young Ballerina used to underscore
the ‘Potter’s Wheel’ interval film.
From BBC radio there are the popular
themes from Jennings at School,
The Old Clockmaker, and from the
long-running Friday Night is
Music Night, the rousing
fanfares of High Adventure.
Other outstanding tracks
include the very popular and exhilarating
Rhythm on Rails which
I seem to recall being a popular choice
on BBC Radio request programmes; another
breezy railway theme, Model Railway
and the pieces that celebrated the London
Charles Williams loved so much including
Bells of St Clements Williams’s
miniature fantasy on the nursery rhyme
‘Oranges and Lemons’ ending in a magnificently
proud peroration for orchestra and bells
and organ, Destruction by Fire,
newsreel music depicting London during
the Blitz, the celebratory Voice of
London which became the signature tune
of the Chappells house band, the Queens
Hall Light Orchestra; and the ‘flirty’
and warmly nostalgic, London Fair.
One of the best albums
of light music I have heard for years.
A nostalgic wallow - wonderful, memorable
tunes. First class performances and
sound.
Ian Lace
* Roderick Elms (piano)