There can be few sounds more evocative of a place than the music of Hawaii. The soft, undulating melodies conjure up an image of the sun, the blue sea and the golden beaches. During his lifetime Felix Mendelssohn devoted his time to bringing those musical scenes to British audiences and the happy, carefree atmosphere of the Pacific Islands is captured again with the issue of these sixteen titles. To most people living in Britain, Hawaii seems like some make-believe dream world created by Hollywood and the picture-postcard manufacturers.
In fact, Hawaii is the largest of eight main islands comprising the Hawaiian Islands located near the centre of the Pacific Ocean. The picture of wonderful beaches, tropical flowers and hula dancers is a true one as far as it goes but there is more to the Hawaiian Islands than the immediate tourist appeal. Hawaii is proud of the fact that on August 21st, 1959, it became the 50th U.S. State, while on the island of Oahu, one of the group forming Hawaii, is located the American naval base of Pearl Harbour. Throughout the entire year the average temperature on the islands never drops below the lower seventies while surfboard riding, deep-sea fishing and swimming are some of the main pursuits of visitors. The visitors—the Hawaiians refer to newcomers as Malihinis, incidentally—are invariably captivated by the extreme friendliness of the people and the fabulous array of flowers (including the famous night-blooming cereus). At a luau, or Hawaiian feast, the visitor is likely to be offered poi, a paste made from the root of the taro plant, to say nothing of such exotic local fruits as pineapple, papaya, guava nectar, passion-fruit juice and papaya juice. Small wonder then that many of the Malihinis find the inducement so strong that they become Kamaainas, or old-timers!
Anyone who has ever visited Hawaii is likely to find that the music of Felix Mendelssohn will bring memories flooding back. Perhaps it will recall a particularly colourful Hukilau, or community fishing festival or possibly a trip to Honolulu’s Upside-Down Falls where a heavy rain dashes over cliffs and is blown upwards instead of falling downwards. Maybe My Isle of Golden Dreams will remind listeners of unspoiled Molokai, one of the smaller islands of the group where wild deer roam freely through pine-apple plantations. But even if Hawaii is only a fantasy world to you then we guarantee that the music of Felix Mendelssohn and his Hawaiian Serenaders will bring sunshine and colour into your home.
The concept of the Stereo record is barely a decade old in this country, but it is as much a part of today’s musical scene as the family gathering around the piano was in the last century. Stereo has brought the full sound of the human voice and the musical instrument back into the home, but in a bigger and better way. The very best orchestral and vocal combinations can be heard to their fullest here on an LP of beautifully balanced works covering a range of instruments and a range of popular classical compositions that are a delight to listen to.
Stereo Spectacular gets off to a rousing start with Sousa’s ‘Stars and Stripes For Ever March’ played by the Halle Orchestra under the baton of Sir John Barbirolli. In complete contrast the Halle Orchestra return later in the LP with Purcell’s Trumpet Voluntary which features William Lang on solo trumpet.
So much of this record has been given to Brass bands because of their ability to bring out the best in a tune, and the tremendous effect obtained on a Stereo recording, where the varying facets of the brass instruments lend themselves so well to the Stereo technique.
The greatest bands with the greatest music: The Band of the Coldstream Guards under the direction of Captain Trevor Sharpe play Osterling’s ‘Winds On The Run’.
A combination of bands from the National Brass Band Festival — Brighouse and Rastrick Band: City of Coventry Band: Grimethorpe Colliery Band: G.U.S. (Footwear Band): Hanwell Band are all brought together under the baton of Sir Arthur Bliss to play the best known of all popular classics Tchaikovsky’s ‘1812 Overture’, a piece that is here given the performance it deserves.
The Black Dyke Mills Band and the Bradford Festival Choral Society are on two tracks both with chorus master George Stead and conductor Geoffrey Brand.
The first the soft and beautiful Robertson and Tynan composition ‘All In the April Evening’. The second with Roy Newsome at the Organ, Handel’s ‘Hallelujah Chorus from the Messiah’. The most English of Musicians and singers performing a work that is part of the English heritage.
Also at the Organ is Ralph Downes playing Bach’s ‘Fugue A La Giga’ at the organ of the Royal Festival Hall.
Two top orchestras add their wealth of musical pleasure, The Pro Arte conducted by John Hollingsworth, with the opening dance from Sullivan’s ‘Pineapple Poll’; and Sir Adrian Boult leading the London Philharmonic in Berlioz’s gay ‘Roman Carnival’.
Two more vocal tracks complete the complement of this record; first the haunting melody of that traditional folk song ‘Greensleeves’ sung here by the St. Paul’s Choir directed by Christopher Dearnley. Second Ivor Emmanuel with the Rhos Male Voice choir and the very Welsh ‘All Through The Night’.
This is a record of contrasts; contrast in every hemisphere of Classical music that can conceivably be contained on one LP, but always the very finest of recordings have been selected to give a ‘Stereo Spectacular’.
Cover versions in the “sound-alike” genre of hits from 1969 including: Blackberry Way, Wichita Lineman, Monsieur Dupont, If Paradise Is Half As Nice, First Of May, Dancing In The Street, Where Do You Go To (My Lovely), Surround Yourself With Sorrow, One Road, I’m Gonna Make You Love Me, Games People Play, To Love Somebody
Catch a leprechaun by the coat-tails, don’t let go, and he’ll have to give you his purse full of gold. Catch this record on a spindle and another kind of treasure will be yours—the lively sounds and melodies of the friendly Irish people having a fling in Dublin’s most typically Irish night-spot.
The renowned Irish Club at 41 Parnell Square in down-town Dublin is the favourite meeting-place for sons of Erin who want to dance to old-fashioned Irish music. Veterans of 1916 congregate to talk over old times, and young people come to absorb the old tunes and traditions now enjoying their greatest popularity in the current revival of Irish music. Brendan Hogan, the leader of the Ballinakill Ceili Band, is much in evidence with his concertina, calling out the dances and generally presiding over the fun. This recording, made on the spot at the height of the festivities, captures the sounds of the dancers and occasional impromptu singing.
Like the Irish people, Irish music is uninhibited and good-natured. If any music was made for sheer good fun it’s the swinging hornpipes, waltzes and jigs on this LP.
Label: MFP 1058 Sleeve Photograph: British Travel Association Sleeve Design: Patrick Coyle
Dolly RITA CAMERON Cornelius RAYMOND COOKE Mrs. Molloy PAT WHITMORE Horace FRED LUCAS Barnaby DAVID RUSSELL The Knightsbridge Theatre Chorus and Orchestra Choral direction by Cliff Adams Conducted by Len Stevens
THE last great American Musical, ‘My Fair Lady’ has at last found its successor – it’s ‘Hello, Dolly!’, a warm, colourful, rousing show which has been packing in the public on Broadway for two years and will most surely do the same in this country when it opens here, fortified by a production which is rumoured to be costing somewhere in the region of £100,000. As with ‘My Fair Lady’, which was adapted (somewhat loosely, it’s true!) from ‘Pygmalion’ by George Bernard Shaw, so ‘Hello, Dolly!’ can also be said to have originated in this country. In 1835 a play entitled ‘A Day Well Spent’ was produced in London. This was written by a fellow called John Oxenford and he soon had the pleasure of seeing his plot lifted and turned into a Viennese comedy. Einen Jux will es sich Machen’. This, in turn, was admired by Thornton Wilder who based his play ‘The Merchant of Yonkers’ upon it. The title of the play was changed to ‘The Matchmaker’ and it is upon that play that ‘Hello, Dolly!’ is based. John Oxenford won’t, presumably, get any royalties.
Hello, Dolly!’ is set in New ‘York City in the year 1898. It is summer and our heroine, Dolly Levi, widow of one Ephraim Levi, a dry-goods merchant, is on her way to arrange a second marriage for the well-known half-millionaire Mr. Horace Vandergelder. That’s what she is supposed to be doing, but in fact, she intends to marry the man herself—and we discover the true character of Dolly Levi as she sings ‘I Put My Hand In’.
We next meet the fabulous Mr. Vandergelder himself, who is afflicted with two clerks, (who in turn are afflicted with Mr. Vandergelder) and his weeping niece, Ermengarde. Mr. Vandergelder, who is pretty certain that he is a genius in a world largely composed of fools, explains why he has decided to marry again in ‘It Takes A Woman’. Dolly arrives and decides to clear the field of all possible rivals (including a Mrs. Irene Molloy—a young widow she had herself presented to Mr. Vandergelder) by announcing the imminent arrival in New York of Ernestina Money, an heiress (and with a name like that, what else?) whom she will present to the lucky Vandergelder that very afternoon. Vandergelder jumps at the chance then goes off on a business errand into the City. His two clerks, Cornelius Hackl and Barnaby Tucker decide that it’s time they began to live a little, so Cornelius tells Barnaby about the wonders of the big city and they and Dolly try to persuade Ermengarde that it’s time for her to rebel, too.
Now we make the acquaintance of Mrs. Molloy, the attractive young widow who is in the running in the Vandergelder marriage stakes. She is a milliner who is finding fife a bit old hat and who wants some excitement—as she tells us in ‘Ribbons Down My Back’. Cornelius and Barnaby have been spotted by Vandergelder as they are attempting to live it up in the big city, and they’re forced to take refuge in Mrs. Molloy’s shop. Vandergelder enters in search of them, and, despite the efforts of Mrs. Molloy, Dolly and Minnie Fay—Mrs. Molloy’s assistant—he discovers that there are men in the shop and, although he doesn’t discover who they are, he is angry enough to break off relations with the milliner and inform Dolly that he will definitely meet her ‘heiress’ that same .evening. Mrs. Molloy is furious but Dolly manages to patch things up by suggesting that the two clerks, who reappear when Vandergelder goes, should escort Mrs. Molloy and Minnie Fay to dinner at the Harmonia Gardens Restaurant. Cornelius has three dollars in his pocket so protests that he couldn’t possibly go to the Harmonia Gardens because they have dancing there—and he can’t dance. So Dolly teaches first Cornelius, then Barnaby and finally everyone in the street as she sings ‘Dancing’.
Act Two begins with the impecunious Cornelius assisted by Barnaby explaining that the best way of reaching the Harmonia Gardens is by walking—that’s ‘Elegance’. And at the Restaurant all the talk is of Dolly Levi who is rumoured to be paying the restaurant a visit for the first time since the death of her husband. And, sure enough, when the excitement has reached fever-pitch the curtains at the main entrance part and Dolly, in a stunning red dress, comes sweeping regally down the stairs to the melody which is the hit of the show—’Hello, Dolly!’ Vandergelder is at the Harmonia Gardens, of course, and Dolly sets about getting him to propose to her by the typically feminine ruse of assuming that he does want to marry her and firmly refusing the offer that the poor man hasn’t quite got around to making. Having put our Mr. Vandergelder completely off balance, she then paints a morbid, dreary picture of what life will be like without her, and then points out that his well-ordered existence is not quite so immaculate as he thinks. This last remark is occasioned by Vandergelder’s discovery of his two clerks, and, horror of horrors, his delicate young niece actually in the show at the restaurant. He discharges Cornelius promptly, but that worthy doesn’t Care—he’s in love with young Mrs. Molloy, and he doesn’t mind telling them all that when a man like him falls in love ‘It Only Takes A Moment.’
Vandergelder we next discover in prison—creating a dis-turbance at the Harmonia Gardens Restaurant is the charge—and Dolly, who visits him, cheers him up immensely with her song of hope and encouragement—’So Long, Dewier But he is released eventually and back in his office without clerks, without niece and without Dolly, he realises that he, like everyone else at times, can be a bit of a fool. And he realises he’d be an even bigger fool if he didn’t get Dolly Levi to marry him. Whereupon Dolly enters, having miraculously expected this situation, he asks her to marry him, she accepts, and the curtain falls to the strains, once again, of ‘Hello, Dolly!’
Latin American rhythms constitute one topic on which every-one in the world of ballroom is agreed. They are unrivalled for colour, vivacity and cultivating a universal urge to move one’s limbs in tempo.
Sydney Thompson, a leading name in British ballroom dancing music for twenty-one years, has epitomised all the attractive appeal of the cha cha cha, paso doble, samba and rumba in this scintillating LP collection. He has not neglected the music itself in favour of a metronomically strict tempo as others have done on record, but has accommodated both in an adroit fashion which will satisfy dancing teachers, their pupils and Latin American aficionados alike.
His orchestra was augmented for this occasion by two expert percussionists handling maraccas, guiro (scraper), cabasa, and pandeiro (samba tambourine), all of which sound notably effective in the stereo version of this album, and the lilting ebullience of these rhythms comes across in full value.
Sydney’s perceptive formula of four bars intro. and sixteen bars regular movement for providing music tailor-made for dancing pupils and their instructors is employed here once again. This is both Latin and in tempo, and both learners and teachers will find it ideally stimulating.
La Derniere Valse, La Vieille Barque, Quand Fera-T-Il Jour Camarade, En Ecoutant Mon Coeur Chanter, Ponts De Paris, Un Monde Avec Toi, Les Yeux De L’Amour, La Chanson De Notre Amour, Chant Olympique, Seuls Au Monde, Quelqu’un Pour Toi, L’Amour
Artists include: Orquesta Sinfónica, Orquesta Florida, Enrique “El Culata”, Los 3 Macarenos, José Luis Campoy, Banda De La General Academia Militar, Orquesta Florida, Los 3 Macarenos, Paquito Simón Y Juan García
Sleeve Notes:
The celebrated composer Manuel de Falla found —scattered and formless, without rhyme or reason—an Andalusian folk art, ancient and graceful like the sea, with its qualities not yet organised, and he raised to the level of Art, to the level of culture and conscience, those values inherent in the racial intuition, giving them the stamp of perfection. By Manuel de Falla, this record contains the «Danza del terror» (The dance of the Terror) from t El amor brujo» and the «Dan za del molinero» (The Miller’s dance) from «El sombre-ro de los tres picos», which have been given prestige by the masterful interpretation of the London Phil-harmonic Orchestra.
Pinned by this golden brooch, the other compositions contained in Music of Spain have been chosen with a view to tracing a panorama as complete as possible of the dances and songs of Spain, principally of Andalusia. In this way, from the fandangos, a dance completely rooted in Spain, known in the 17th Century, if not earlier and extended throughout the whole of Spain, to the zambra, the ritual dance vitalised by the gipsies, passing by way of the solea, by bulerias, the tientos and the serranas, examples especially «jondos» which keep in their bosom a deep emotional content expressed in heart beats, all these dances and songs keep in this record the flavour and purity which have lasted from the remote time of their creation.
Together with these, Music of Spain enfolds some compositions belonging to the type know as fla-menco, a more or less accidental derivation of the «jondo» which sometimes leaves one to guess, beneath its gay and playful aspect, those brilliant and sudden scintillations which are like reminders of its noble origin : «El gitano seriorito», «Aires de Cadiz», «Bajo mi cielo andaluz», «Espana carli» and «Paresito faraon».
The rich diversity of this record is increased by three «pasodobleso «La novia de Espana», «El pica-dor» and «Madrid de mis amores». The pasodoble is a dance common to various Spanish regions, airy and mettlesome, and which within its own peculiar adornments, always full of vivacity and elegance, undergoes innumerable variations and innovations.
