MARBECKS COLLECTABLE: British Light Music Classics Vol 3 (Includes Portrait of a Flirt, The Girl from Corsica & Montmartre)

'Corp's performances are sumptuous' (Sunday Times)

'An artfully cherry-picked selection played with affection and zest, which will leave you with a warm glow - and perhaps a feeling of regret that no one writes music like this any more' (Classic FM Magazine)

'Ronald Corp and the New London Orchestra play with their familiar accomplishment and affection and, if anything, an even surer grasp of pace than before. The CD is gratifyingly full and excellently recorded. More, please! (Gramophone)

Another collection of favourites from an earlier generation - indeed from three earlier generations. Again the titles may not be familiar but in most cases the melodies will be. In Party Mood, for instance, may furrow a few brows until it starts to play, when it's safe to say that everybody in Britain over a certain age will immediately recognise it as the signature tune of the BBC's long-running 'Housewives Choice'. Alpine Pastures (1955) will be scarcely less familiar through its use as signature tune of another long-running radio series, 'My Word'. The first two volumes each included something by Albert W Ketèlbey and this one presents perhaps his best-loved piece, In a Persian Market from 1920, evoking images of camel-drivers, jugglers and snake-charmers, and heard here complete with its chorus of beggars. The earliest piece on the disc dates from 1898 - Lionel Monckton's Soldiers in the Park from The Runaway Girl. It's perhaps better known by the first line of its chorus, 'Oh, listen to the band!' Valse Septembre by Felix Godin has recently enjoyed renewed exposure in the film Titanic. We hear it here in the original orchestration.
21 delightful tracks altogether, sparklingly played, as usual, by Ronald Corp and his band of merry men and women of The New London Orchestra. Their manifest joy in making this recording is very apparent in this happy disc.