Ronald C. White

Britain has a fine tradition in the creation of quality light music of the sort that plumbs no intellectual or emotional stimulation, but lifts the spirits with ingratiating melodies decked out with consummate craftsmanship. In this collection are gathered some of the classics that the genre has produced over a period from Victorian times to the second Elizabethan age.

British Light Music Classics 1 (CDA66868) was one of the best-selling CDs of 1996 and put lots of smiles on people's faces. In fact it is still—late January—in the charts. Its success has inspired this second disc which contains another 20 well-known favourites spanning the century, the earliest being Bucalossi's Grasshopper's Dance from 1905 and Herman Finck's In the Shadows from 1910. Once again many of the pieces will be familiar as radio and TV signature tunes—to 'Down Your Way', 'Dr Finlay's Casebook', 'TV Newsreel', 'The Archers' and, from the 1940s, 'In Town Tonight', the first broadcast of which brought tens of thousands of requests to the BBC for the name of the introductory music, Eric Coates's march Knightsbridge.