Prom 24: British Light Music

Reviewing last night’s Prom of British Light Music feels a bit like getting all AA Gill on your granny’s Victoria sponge. The collage of musical morsels from Bantock, Arnold, Coates and Elgar is music made with love, for pleasure, by composers who rated enjoyment over admiration. It’s music that smothers critical appraisal gently but firmly in its tweed-clad bosom, killing you with musical kindness.

It’s a combination we’ve come to expect from the John Wilson Orchestra who batter their way into our hearts every year at the Proms with their joy in the lighter side of the repertoire. The English composers on last night’s bill might not have quite the pizzazz of their Hollywood counterparts, but that was no excuse for so non-committal a performance from Barry Wordsworth and the BBC Concert Orchestra.

Soloists Kathryn Stott and Noriko Ogawa gave this piece of silliness rather more energy than it deserved

Eric Coates’s The Three Elizabeths is a bit of a gem. He more than anyone knew how to straddle the art/popular divide, spinning generous tunes with relentless good humour. Inspired by three English queens (the two obvious, plus Elizabeth of Glamis, wife of George VI), the suite takes us from Hollywood-Tudor via the Celtic Twilight to a brisk contemporary patriotism that could stir even the irredeemably disaffected. Sadly the ensemble sagged, and particularly in the central movement where vital, heart-tugging suspensions were smudged or missed, and the glorious oboe theme not quite cherished as it should be.

Walton’s Crown Imperial – the only mainstream hit of the concert – was slicker, but while a certain amount of dignified restraint could be understood here, I can’t quite see what business it had in Malcolm Arnold’s first set of English Dances, nor his Concerto for Two Pianos. The latter is a riotous novelty of a work whose barely 15-minute span opens with a disproportionate assault of brass and timpani and ends with musical-hall vampings from the pianos, whooping from the orchestra, and more tambourine action than a one-man band. Baffling though the work itself is, there was no mistaking the clarity of intent from soloists Kathryn Stott (pictured right) and Noriko Ogawa, who gave this piece of silliness rather more energy than it deserved.

The English Dances see Arnold on rather better form, and drew a rather more focused performance from the orchestra here. The cheeky-charming Vivace was led by the brass, and even the saccharine Mesto couldn’t take the edge off the gloriously syncopated energy of the Allegro Risoluto, teetering always just on the edge of vulgarity. There’s certainly little of the vulgar about Elgar’s Nursery Suite, but it’s more of a lack than a blessing. This piece of kitschy innocence hasn’t dated well, and despite the composer’s gift for melody movements like “The Merry Doll” and “Busy-Ness” are liable to turn the stomach.

Thank goodness for Gordon Langford’s Say It With Music – a tight little medley that romps its way through all the hit tunes of British light music, many still instantly familiar today as theme tunes for radio. This was more like it – an expertly orchestrated selection of big (and familiar) melodies, with none of the artistic pretensions of Bantock’s wishy-washy The Pierrot of the Minute nor the Elgar. Audibly relaxing and enjoying themselves, the audience greeted it with huge enthusiasm.

It was a late surge, but I found it hard to join them. I can enthuse as loudly as anyone about Bax’s Tintagel, get excited about Bliss’s Suite from Checkmate, even champion several of the Arnold symphonies, but this neither-fish-nor-flesh repertoire just doesn’t cut it. It’s a poor reflection of an era that was musically much richer than this concert came close to suggesting.

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