EMR CD064 | DETAILS
  EMR CD064
   
 

DICKY BIRD HOP
Light Music Piano Classics
   
  Paul Guinery (pf.)
   
  EAN 5 060263 500605

EM Records is delighted to present ‘Dicky Bird Hop’: an anthology of light piano music performed by Paul Guinery, who has had a long and rich association with EM Records’s parent, The English Music Festival. The disc showcases the craftsmanship and joyous inventiveness of this genre, the works born of their composers’ dedication and sheer love for music. As Guinery writes in his introduction to the recording in the booklet notes: “Most of the pieces are admittedly upbeat but I don’t think there’s any harm in being cheered up. Frivolity is not the same as superficiality. In any case, why feel guilty?”

 

TRACK LISTING AND AUDIO EXTRACTS
     
Jack Strachey (1894–1972)
1. ‘THEATRELAND’ (MARCH)  
       
Geoffrey Toye (1889–1942)
2. ‘THE HAUNTED BALLROOM’  
       
Ronald Gourley (1896–1957)
3. ‘THE DICKY BIRD HOP’  
       
Benjamin Dale (1885–1943)
4. ‘PRUNELLA’ (INTERMEZZO)  
       
Sir Noël Coward (1899–1973)
5. ‘MAZURKA’  
6. ‘PAS DE DEUX’  
7. ‘HORNPIPE’  
       
Richard Addinsell (1904–1977)
8. ‘INVITATION WALTZ’  
       
Jack Strachey
9. ‘IN PARTY MOOD (BONNE COMPAGNIE)’  
       
Edwin York Bowen (1884–1961)
10. ‘SERIOUS DANCE’  
       
Haydn Wood (1882–1959)
11. ‘LOVELORN’ (INTERMEZZO)  
       
Vivian Ellis (1903–1996)
12. ‘ALPINE PASTURES’  
       
Sandy Wilson (1924–2014)
13. ‘THE CENTENARIANS’ WALTZ’  
       
HUBERT BATH (1883–1945)
14. ‘CORNISH RHAPSODY’  
       
Billy Mayerl (1902–1959)
15. ‘JILL ALL ALONE’  
       
Madeleine Dring (1923–1977)
16. ‘PINK MINOR’  
17. ‘BLUE AIR’  
18. ‘BROWN STUDY’  
       
Eric Coates (1886–1957)
19. ‘VALSE’ (World Première recording)  
       
Sir Arnold Bax (1883–1953)
20. ‘OLIVER’S SLEEPLESS NIGHT’  
       
Geoffrey Wright (1912–2010)
21. ‘TRANSATLANTIC LULLABY’  
       
Richard Addinsell
22. ‘WARSAW CONCERTO’  
       

 

REVIEWS
Beautifully shaped by Benjamin Frith... Beguiling sounds, graced by the tawny richness and unexaggerated line of Richard Jenkinson’s cello playing... The sense of purpose and sureness of line of Ian Venables’ music is pure oxygen.
EMR CD31 | BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE
Exquisitely rewarding... Ravishing accounts.
EMR CD029 | CHOIR AND ORGAN
This is music of great beauty and integrity and the performances fully do it justice. It would be criminal to let it pass you by.

EMR CD028 | INTERNATIONAL
RECORD REVIEW

The Bridge Quartet approach these pieces with a sympathetic and insightful warmth, and confirm their ambassadorial credentials for British chamber music. A lovely, radiant disc.
EMR CD025 | Gramophone
Duncan Honeybourne’s playing is astonishingly affectionate, yet never saccharine... Honeybourne plays with suave confidence.
EMR CD024 | INTERNATIONAL PIANO
Rupert Marshall-Luck is an ideal interpreter: generously but not effusively lyrical; agile and athletic... The warm, folk-song like slow movement is at times almost painfully beautiful, with a shimmering pastoral central section... Marshall-Luck is, again, indefatigable and keenly picks up on the work’s melancholic strain.  Finely recorded and with comprehensive booklet notes, this is a must for fans of 20th-century English repertoire.
EMR CD023 | THE STRAD