Naxos
2007
Various Composers
Vintage TV & Radio Classics
About This Album
The primary audience for this disc will be located in Britain, where the music will all have the distinctive half-familiarity of television and radio themes, but even non-British listeners can have a good time with the music. The situation in Britain was different from in America, where by the 1950s a good deal of music written for television had been stamped by popular idioms. Here, although a few pieces were written specifically for broadcast purposes and a few others came from the vast libraries of stock themes employed by British broadcasters, most of the music had an independent existence prior to being attached to a specific broadcast show. American television producers also drew on preexisting music, of course (it's hard, if you're of a certain age, not to think of Chet Huntley when you hear the scherzo of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9), but not to the same extent. Thus the album includes music by such famed figures as Ralph Vaughan Williams and Eric Coates in addition to composers more closely associated with British light music genres. Marches, waltzes, and related locomotive genres are well represented on the program, and listeners interested in knowing what they're getting into here can sample the sprightly but circumspect Out of the Blue March, track 16, by Hubert Bath.
Track List

Ralph Vaughan Williams Sea Songs, march for military or brass band
1.
Billy Mayerl Marigold, A Syncopated Impression For Piano
2.
Gilbert Vinter Waltzing With Sullivan, For Orchestra
3.
Eric Coates Sound And Vision, March For Orchestra
4.
Fritz Spiegl Radio 4 UK, Television Theme For Orchestra
5.
Arnold Safroni Imperial Echoes, March For Orchestra
7.
Ivor Slaney Top Dog (theme From The Television Series The Men From The Ministry), For Orchestra
8.
Archibald Joyce A Thousand Kisses, For Orchestra
9.
Woolf Phillips Parisian Mode, For Orchestra
10.
Cyril Watters Willow Waltz, For Orchestra
11.
George Melachrino Winter Sunshine, For Orchestra
13.
William Hill-Bowen Paris Promenade, For Orchestra
14.
Paris Metro, For Orchestra
15.
Hubert Bath Out Of The Blue, March For Band
16.
Ashworth Hope Barnacle Bill, For Orchestra
17.
Alan Langford A Little French Suite, For Orchestra
18.
Montague Phillips Dance Revels, Suite For Orchestra
19.
20.
21.
John Dankworth Widespread World (Rediffusion London Call Sign), March For Orchestra
22.