"Eric Coates’
... music crackled with enthusiasm and
vitality ... a man would have to have
a wooden heart not to respond to the
music of Eric Coates" (Sir Charles
Groves)
With this new Avie
release, John Wilson makes a welcome
return to the music of Eric Coates after
his two acclaimed recordings made with
the BBC Concert Orchestra for ASV in
1996 (CD WHL 2107) and 1998 (CD WHL
2112). I remember writing my reviews
then and, in common with a number of
others, including the The Times reviewer,
noted that Wilson had a magical empathy
with the world and music of Coates.
His readings then and now could compare
with those of the composer himself and
with those of the late Stanford Robinson.
Now Wilson returns to conduct the Royal
Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra in
another Coates programme full of happy
nostalgia and joie de vivre. Incidentally,
this same orchestra was conducted, in
very much the same repertoire, by Sir
Charles Groves for a series of EMI Classics
recordings made in the late 1960s and
early 1970s in remarkably good sound.
John Wilson has specialised
in the music of Eric Coates and has
been responsible for the archiving of
the composer’s work in London’s Royal
College of Music. In the course of his
work, Wilson came across an unpublished
Coates work that had been ‘lost’. It
was, a ballet sketch, Coquette, that
was performed and recorded for the first
time on ASV CD WHL 2107.
But to this new recording
... and how delightful it is! I was
particularly elated with Wilson’s unashamedly
romantic and unaffected readings of
Coates’s more romantic and nostalgic
writing. Wilson really wrings the heartstrings
and brings a lump to the throat. Take
his meltingly beautiful treatment of
that gorgeous tenderly romantic tune
for the opening of ‘The man about town’
from the Three Men Suite with
its infectious toe-tapping ‘between-the-wars’
jazz reprise. Then there is that other
lovely nostalgic evocation, ‘Langham
Place’, Eric’s elegiac tribute to the
BBC which had used so much of his music
to introduce their radio and television
programmes.
Coates’s marches were
justly famous and immensely popular.
Wilson realises all their ebullient
swagger. From the London Again Suite
there is ‘Oxford Street’ with tunes
that easily rival the perhaps better
known ‘Knightsbridge’ March from the
earlier London Suite. And I was
delighted that Wilson had chosen to
include one of the less familiar marches,
and one of my favourites, the stirring
Television March composed for
the resumption of TV broadcasting on
June 8th 1946 after the privations
of World War II.
Dance music was a favourite
Coates musical form and the waltz one
of his favoured dance rhythms. They
abound in this album in memorable tunefulness
- from the lilting charm of ‘At the
Dance’ from the early Summer Days
Suite to the glitter and sophistication
of ‘Mayfair’, the London Again waltz,
and the sweep and glamour of the Concert
Valse, Footlights.
Those that disparage
light music and Coates’s work in particular,
might like to examine the composer’s
Cinderella for this extended
piece, some 16 minutes long, is really
a tone poem relating the fairy story
with great wit and style. Coates begins
by suggesting, with a solo clarinet
and hesitant, quivering strings, the
beauty and essential goodness and humility
of Cinderella. This is writing quite
removed from the norm of light music.
Grotesque sardonic material suggests
the excitement of the ugly sisters preparing
for the ball. You hear Cinderella’s
sighs that she will be unable to go
herself. Later, a series of waltzes
delineates the progress of the story
at the ball: a tender waltz for the
romantic meeting between Prince Charming
and Cinderella and a glamorous excited
waltz for their ecstatic dancing, before
twelve tam-tam crashes signal both midnight
and the end of Cinderella’s golden dream.
Eric Coates and John Wilson make Cinderella’s
dejection and despair quite palpable
in the work’s most touching episode.
But hilarity follows as Coates has the
Ugly Sisters trying on the glass slipper
before the romantic conclusion..
The Selfish Giant,
another of Eric Coates phantasies, is
based on the Oscar Wilde story of a
lonely giant whose garden is in perpetual
winter. It is only when he opens his
heart and lets the children in to play
that Spring can enter. Again Coates’
music is magical in its colour and characterisation
and, of course, wonderfully melodious.
Sweet tuneful nostalgic
delight – a must for Eric Coates admirers.
Ian Lace
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra/John
Wilson 
