Ketèlby In Holiday Mood Suite; Three Fanciful Etchings; In a Fairy Realm Suite; In a Camp of the Ancient Britons etc BBC Concert Orchestra/Martin Yates Dutton Epoch CDLX7407 82:29 mins
Albert Ketèlbey added his surname’s spurious accent in order to stop people pronouncing its first half as ‘kettle’. This hugely successful master of British light music tried equally hard, in musical terms, to hide his roots in the Victorian working-class streets of Birmingham. Greatest hits like In a Monastery Garden and In a Persian Market might be missing from this engaging album, but with pieces describing marching gnomes, dancing fairies, prettified Japan and the colourful doings of Native Americans, the dominant note remains escapist fantasy, sedulously pitched to satisfy popular tastes in the early decades of the 20th century.
Martin Yates’s infectious performances with the BBC Concert Orchestra make absolutely clear why Ketèlbey’s fancies still bring pleasure today. They don’t just have attractive melodies; they also have abundant heart. Their craftsmanship, too, is considerable, most obvious in the orchestrations. A practical musician to his fingertips, Ketèlbey always ensures that everything sits well with the orchestra, from piquant woodwind solos to the sprinklings of glockenspiel and celesta.
The longest single piece is the eight-minute In a Camp of the Ancient Britons; the most fascinating is the Fanciful Etchings suite of 1927, largely based on earlier piano pieces, inventively reworked. Along the way we get lovely waltzes, sunny marches, a ragtime spree and the genuinely charming A Birthday Greeting, a birdsong and bells concoction composed to mark the future Queen Elizabeth II turning six.
Half the items have never been recorded digitally before; everything is very entertaining, and played with succulent panache. Don’t hesitate.
Geoff Brown