So hugely does this album feature in the collection that we may need to come back to it.
Mantovani Plays the Immortal Classics, Decca (1953). I see that Mantovani also released four other albums in 1953 including I suspect the less than immortal An Album of Christmas Music.
It's hard not to make fun of Mantovani. Even the fan website is defensive:
Quality Light Orchestra Music is sometimes confused, with "background music, or "easy listening" music, it surely is not.... Another Mantovani friend of mine, when someone mentions "Elevator Music," states, "Show me that elevator!"
Have you ever heard of a category of music called "Quality Light Orchestra Music"? You will be relieved to hear that there is a new biography of Mantovani out. One reviewer cryptically comments:
As years pass, we realize that art glows at different angles when and where it is examined and experienced. And generally the world is looked at differently afterwards.
Sure.
The thing is I rather like this record. I like it for two reasons.
Firstly, I love things that were once enormously popular and have now vanished off the radar. Mantovani fits the bill. The first person to sell a million stereo records, phenomenonly popular in Britain and America, one of the recording stars of his era. Now he would be unknown to everyone under fifty.
Secondly, the little sticker my mother put on the album cover says: "Please keep this record. It is very old, but it takes me back to when I first met M. and contains two of my most loved pieces of music: Handel's Largo and Schubert's Ave Maria."
When I was a kid my mother had a tape of something like the London Pops Orchestra playing classical tunes. It had, predicatbly, a version of Pachelbel's Canon on it. It was an "interpretation" of that piece and it ended with a french horn. The thing is I never knew until I was a lot older that it was an interpretation and I got rather attached to that french horn. Even now when I hear versions of Canon I am always listening for the surging horn at the end, and always disappointed when it doesn't happen. My point is, with some songs it doesn't matter if the first version you hear of something is a supposedly "inferior" - it will become the version that matters most for you.
3 comments:
Robert will be calling you a genius after this one! The mention of 'M' made me wonder if Matovani ever recorded the James Bond Theme in later life. Yes, I remember as a child how my older brother used to play one of Mozart's piano sonatas. When I did an orchestration of it in my first year at university, the lecturer was very unimpressed at my phrasing and dynamics. I tried to explain that I'd heard it played like that many times!
I would say it's highly likely... later in life he probably started giving rap songs the Mantovani treatment. Now "show me THAT elevator."
It was Pachelbel's birthday yesterday. Random. I think he turned 340. What do you get a 340 year old? Too many candles - not enough cake.
Post a Comment