What the British call light music and North Americans call easy listening had roots in the music of Johann Strauss II and the British semi-popular composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including Arthur Sullivan and Edward German. In its early years, its home was in British hotels and seaside towns, as can be seen in the length of the pieces here. They are mostly short works but too long to fit on a single 78 rpm record. Among its major British exponents was Eric Coates, and he was the great melodist of the ...
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What the British call light music and North Americans call easy listening had roots in the music of Johann Strauss II and the British semi-popular composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including Arthur Sullivan and Edward German. In its early years, its home was in British hotels and seaside towns, as can be seen in the length of the pieces here. They are mostly short works but too long to fit on a single 78 rpm record. Among its major British exponents was Eric Coates, and he was the great melodist of the group. This strong collection of his pieces, with the specialist conductor Andrew Penny leading the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra, was originally released on the Marco Polo label in 1993; its commercial success in this new release by Naxos is no surprise, for this genre has only grown more popular since then. Coates falls right into the space between classical and pop; some of these pieces have hints of jazz or world music, but he was a fine orchestral colorist with, above all, a...
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