Two by Eric Coates

Eric Coates

Fred over at Random Classics recently gave us the London Suite by the "uncrowned king of British light music" (to use Peter Dempsey's phrase from a Naxos reissue), Eric Coates (1886-1957), as conducted by a veteran of American light music, Morton Gould.  I answer with its sequel, conducted, as were many recordings of his music during his lifetime, by the composer himself:

Eric Coates: London Again - Suite (1936) and By the Tamarisk (Intermezzo)
Symphony Orchestra conducted by Eric Coates
Recorded April 30 and May 1, 1936
Columbia Masterworks set MX-102, two 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC files, 43.57 MB)
Link (MP3 files, 22.59 MB)

American Columbia had quite a few recordings by Eric Coates on its catalogue, as he was then very popular over here, but only two of them made it into the Masterworks album set series (the other was the "Cinderella" Fantasy).  When I was a boy of eleven, I owned (but alas, no longer own) an American Columbia coupling of Coates conducting his magnificent London Bridge and Knightsbridge marches (the latter being a movement from the original London Suite), and I have loved his music, with its sense of everything being right in the world, ever since.

During the 1940s, Coates switched his recording allegiance from EMI to Decca, and one of his first productions for that label was a recording of his 1944 suite, The Three Elizabeths, which boasts another wonderful march that honors the then-18-year-old Princess Elizabeth, the current Queen:

Eric Coates: The Three Elizabeths - Suite (1944)
National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Eric Coates
Recorded November 15, 1944
English Decca AK 1109 and AK 1110, two 78-rpm records
Link (FLAC file, 46.36 MB)
Link (MP3 file, 24.77 MB)

This, by the way, is not the same recording as one that Fred offered last year, on a London LP coupled with Coates' Four Centuries Suite.  That recording is a remake, dating from the early 1950s.  This set was among the first English Decca "ffrr" records imported into the US after the war, and sold in special (US-made) albums, in this case with a catalogue number of EDA-8: