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Robert Farnon (1917-2005)
Orchestral Works
Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra/Adrian Leaper
rec. 1991, Slovakia
NAXOS 8.574323 [63]

These 17 short pieces are drawn from among the elite of British style light music. Their dates are mostly scattered throughout the 1940s with outliers in the 1950s and 1970s. They were written by a Toronto-born man who was a prince among light music practitioners. He never lacked for work even when the genre began to stagger. The music sometimes sports a Mantovani sheen and one that found for them a place among Guild’s 135-disc-strong splendid and much-missed Golden Age of Light Music series. Not to forget the Reference Recordings Farnon disc (“Captain Horatio Hornblower RN” RPO/Farnon RR-47CD).

There are plenty of familiar moments including the Westminster chimes in the slippery-gliding polished Westminster Waltz and the unaccustomed gauntness of the Colditz March written later on for BBCTV’s successful Colditz series. Manhattan Playboy has a few Gershwin twists and twirls and streetcar references among Farnon’s usual broad bow-wave melodies. For all his faculty for commercial sheen he never lost touch with his gentle high summer pastoral side, as in Lake of the Woods, How Beautiful is Night, Pictures in the Fire, À la claire Fontaine and In a Calm. Each adds some contrast in what would otherwise have been a little unremitting. Derby Day is full-on again and not as varied as William Alwyn’s overture of the same title. The 1946 State Occasion is a foray into Sovereign pomp and circumstance, much as Haydn Wood’s contemporary marches as well as the Empire March by Montague Phillips. Gateway to the West is among the most satisfying of his pieces and reeks of a confident sunny travelogue of the 1940s cinema ‘shorts’.

The collection launches with the well-practised exhilarations of Portrait of a Flirt. Farnon returns to the theme sometimes in comedic garb. Peanut Polka and Jumping Bean both recall the cinema sing-a-longs when a ball would bounce from word to word on screen to encourage the audience to sing and keep time.

This is good and true to style with a nice mix of moods.

Rob Barnett

Contents
Portrait of a Flirt
How Beautiful Is Night
Melody Fair
À la claire fontaine
Peanut Polka
3 Impressions for Orchestra: In a Calm
Gateway to the West
Jumping Bean
Pictures in the Fire
Little Miss Molly
Colditz March
A Star Is Born
The Westminster Waltz
3 Impressions for Orchestra: Manhattan Playboy
Lake of the Woods
Derby Day
State Occasion