Another dull shopping trip on Friday was enlivened by my hearing the first five tracks of the first New London Orch/Ronald Corp British Light Music collections.

This included Collins' beloved Vanity Fair (in over 50 years I've never tired of this tune) and also Sydney Baines' Destiny Waltz. 

I was reflecting that Destiny was said to be a favourite of Sir John Barbirolli and that he included it in New Year Concerts with the Halle Orchestra, sometimes also playing its opening cello tune himself.

Sir John was also a fan of Duke Ellington and was pleased to have been born in the same year as the Duke, 1899.

Do you know what seemingly out-of-character enthusiasms are enjoyed by other well-known musicians?

Ian.

Good example.  Mackerras has been heavily involved in G and S for all his professional life and was musical director of a G and S evening at the Proms in 2005.

One of his best-known projects is the arrangement of G and S numbers into the ballet Pineapple Poll, which he was inspired to undertake when playing oboe in the orchestras taking part in productions of G and S in his native Australia when he was a very young man.

Mackerras recorded quite a lot of lighter music when he was younger.  His many recordings of the time include, to pick one or two items at random, the Overtures to Donna Diana and Die Fledermaus, Finlandia, the Skaters Waltz and several Eric Coates pieces.  He was particularly active in the recording of ballet music, recording all or some of Coppelia, Sylvia, Faust, William Tell, Les Sylphides, Les Patineurs, Dance of the Hours etc etc.  One of my favourite old vinyl LPs is of Sir Charles conducting excerpts from Delibes' La Source and Messager's the Two Pigeons.

Ian.

The composer Brian Elias is an avid sewer of needlepoint. Tippett loved marmalade, and John Cage bought himself a piano with the winnings from an Italian TV quiz show in the 1950s(?) where his specialist subject was mushrooms.

Dvorak was apparently an avid trainspotter, though I can't seem to find a source for this claim.


To edit or not to edit? ... Too many aphids avids spoil the broth. Send me to the Penancedantry Room.

All four of them?

Colin Davis relaxes with knitting.






I mean with the act of knitting. Not merely with knitted items in the vicinity.

And Now All This, A.W.C. Sellar The practice and fury of knitting (woology).