Eric Coates Orchestral Music on Naxos

First things first. This present album is a repackaging of the 1998 Marco Polo CD (8.223521) issued as part of the record company’s exploration of British Light Music series. This sequence featured many well-known names from that genre: Ronald Binge, Robert Farnon, Richard Addinsell, Trevor Duncan and many others. There were two albums of music by Eric Coates. It is fair to say that the present CD’s companion volume contained the pot-boilers, including the ubiquitous Dam Busters March, the evocative London Suites and the wartime favourite, Calling All Workers. That said, the opening track on this present CD, Sleepy Lagoon, is world famous as the theme tune to Roy Plumley’s long running Desert Island Discs. How many people hear this and think it must evoke a tropical island in the sun. In fact, it was inspired by the view from Selsey towards Bognor Regis. 

Springtime (1937) is Coates’s eleventh suite. It has never gained the popularity of some of the other examples. There are three well-balanced movements: 1. Fresh Morning: Pastorale, 2. Noonday Song: Romance and 3. Dance in the Twilight: Valse. The opening two movements cast a backward glance to a lost pre Great War idyll, whereas the final Valse is both optimistic and thoughtful at the same time. Overall, this is one of Coates’s most subtle works that deserves more popularity.

I have never really enjoyed the Saxo-Rhapsody (1936), and I cannot tell the reader why. Although it is written in a single movement, the structure is ternary with an “energetic” Allegro vivace bookended by a sympathetic Moderato passage. Unusually for Coates, this is the only orchestral work “that [is] not pictorial or programmatic, but a piece of ‘absolute’ music.” It majors on the instrument’s lyrical characteristics.

At the time of composition, the saxophone was looked at suspiciously by serious artists. But as a contemporary critic noted, “…when its resources are skilfully exploited, when its melancholy tones are blended with those gender and nobler instruments, it is capable of effects both novel and pleasant.” It is given a splendid performance here by Kenneth Edge.

Romance is in the air with the pensively-titled rhapsody Last Love. It has been described as a “song without words.” Whatever the emotions evoked by this dreamy music, it is a romantic number that pushes beyond the trite to something deeper and more expressive. Last Love is one of only two pieces written in the fateful year of 1939. The other is the Footlights Waltz. This is a wistful reflection on Coates time working in the theatre. Rob Barnett in these pages has described it as ‘dreamy, silvery and convey[ing] that floating effortlessness so typical of the Coates magic’. Footlights Waltz is the third of only three concert waltzes that the composer wrote: the other two are Sweet Seventeen and Dancing Night. It is probably the best.

The Four Ways Suite was completed in 1927. It was dedicated to the conductor Basil Cameron. The idea here is to celebrate the four corners of the world. The first movement, the North, is a rhapsody on the well-known Scottish tune Ca’ the Yowes. The atmosphere is sometimes pastiche Scots. This is followed by a “languorous waltz” depicting points South. Just how far in this direction is not clear. The night-time venues of London are nearer the mark, rather than some more exotic locations. Eastwards looks to East Asia and is full of “oriental clichés.” Albert Ketèlbey’s In a Persian Market is never far away from the listener’s memory. Equally stereotypical is the West movement which majors on things American, especially the Charleston. It is a jazz parody, and one of the best. Sadly the Four Ways Suite did not generate a deal of enthusiasm. It has fallen out of Coates’s repertoire.

Lazy Night (1931, not 1932, as in the track listing) is another “nature work.” Like Sleepy Lagoon, it was inspired by the surroundings of Selsey. That said, this is not a tone poem, more of a mood picture. The clue is in its subtitle – 'valse romance'. It is evocative of someone dreaming, perhaps whilst sitting in the garden of a big art deco hotel in Bournemouth, and hearing waltzes in the ballroom, or an early evening stroll in a London Park.

The Eighth Army and the High Flight Marches have not retained the popularity of the Dam Buster’s. The former was dedicated to General Montgomery after his victory at Alamein in 1942. Later, it was used as the signature tune for BBC Middle East broadcasts. Once again, the main theme bounces along, and the trio is more invigorating than may be expected. The orchestration is remarkable. High Flight was Eric Coates’s final composition, finished in 1956. It was devised for the eponymous film, telling a story of officer cadets training at Cranwell. Coates’s march was incorporated into the film score, which was devised by Douglas Gamley and Kenneth Jones. The movie was a failure, but the march remains a success, and deserves to be heard more often. The “big tune” is every bit as good as The Dam Buster’s March.

The sound quality of this CD is excellent. The playing is enthusiastic and never patronising. The original 1993 liner notes by Michael Ponder are most helpful.

This disc introduces repertoire that is a little beyond the better-known potboilers of the companion disc, Naxos 8.555178. That said, there is much wonderful stuff here that deserves the listener’s attention. Optimistically, this present delightful re-release will be purchased by those Coates’s enthusiasts who missed it thirty years ago.

Track Listing:
Eric Coates (1886-1957)
By the Sleepy Lagoon (1930)
Springtime Suite (1937)
Saxo-Rhapsody (1936)
Footlights Waltz (1939)
Four Ways Suite (1927)
The Eighth Army March (1942)
Lazy Night (1931)
Last Love (1939)
High Flight March (1956)
Kenneth Edge (Saxophone)
Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra/Andrew Penny
rec. 23-30 April 1993, Concert Hall of Slovak Radio, Bratislava, Slovakia
NAXOS 8.555194
With thanks to MusicWeb International where this review was first published.