The World of Ketèlby

Sometimes a musician of exceptional gifts decides to take the low road and make life easier for himself. I recall the Scottish tenor Kenneth McKellar who had exceptional ability and sense of style as a singer of Handel at a time when Handel was still largely unsung. There was a less demanding career available to McKellar in putting on a kilt and singing haggisy rubbish on television, so that was what he did and I dare say I would have done the same if I'd had his talent. Albert Ketelbey (1875-1959) found himself in a similar position. His outstanding abilities had shown themselves early, but from the time of first establishing his own distinctive niche as a composer in 1912 he never looked back, retired very early and lived on to a ripe and comfortable old age.

Ketelbey's light music used to be a staple of radio programmes with such names as Housewives' Choice and Workers' Playtime. There is more to it than you might think, and the liner-note accompanying this disc has some intelligent comments to offer on the matter. Ketelbey knew what he was doing, and he gauged his audience very accurately. He was not alone in this either. Elgar, no less, wrote some really quite good music for those vanished establishments the tea-rooms, and I can still recall hearing his Salut d'Amour and such like played in Miss Buick's and Miss Cranston's along with downsized chamber arrangements of Ketelbey's Bells Across the Meadows and In the Moonlight. It is all very English of course, but English taste of this type liked a touch of foreign colouring - nothing too authentic, just chocolate-box impressionism. There is a number here called By the Blue Hawaiian Waters featuring one of those instruments whatever they are called, and Ketelbey also conducts us to A Chinese Temple Garden, A Persian Market and The Mystic Land of Egypt, whatever is supposed to be mystic about Egypt. There is a good deal of vigour in much of this music, and the patriotic item that closes this selection With Honour Crowned is actually rather good in my opinion, and I would have thought so if I had been told it was by Elgar or Walton.

You can't tell me that the taste for this kind of music has gone away. Unfashionable would be an understatement, but I'm still surprised to find that I am giving this disc its first notice here. It may be of course that other reviewers would have simply been too embarrassed. I am completely unabashed. Not only am I pleased to own this disc I am hereby inciting the rest of you to hear it as well. The first 9 pieces were recorded in 1959 and are given here in an analogue-to-digital remastering. The remaining 5 are simply in mono from 1954, and none the worse for it. These 5 are also much better directed, with far more `quality' and refinement in the orchestral tone. I still remember the name of the conductor Stanford Robinson, although Robert Sharples is previously unfamiliar to me. The whole disc is going to suit me just fine as background music, what with its Blue Hawaiian Waters and its monks doo-wah-wahing In A Monastery Garden or A Chinese Temple Garden as appropriate.

I now await the second coming of Ketelbey.