Light Fantastic, BBCSO, Wilson, Royal Festival Hall/BBC Radio 3

If Eric Coates’s Knightsbridge March is good enough for Gergiev, who conducted it as a saving-grace encore of a very messy World Orchestra for Peace Prom in 2005 (17 orchestral leaders in the first violins, not a happy gambit), then it’s certainly worth the time of the BBC Symphony Orchestra and one of its biggest sound-shapers. Bright spark John Wilson unhesitatingly claims Coates as his favourite light-music composer. But this concert served up more than just bubbles in the champagne of the Southbank’s Festival of Britain 60th anniversary celebrations; there was some decent semi-serious stuff on parade, too.

The least expected of it was Edward German’s Romeo and Juliet music, with a love theme worthy of Massenet and lovingly done as such, although the conflict that interrupts it is hardly on the Tchaikovsky level. And this is the composer I always laughed at simply because my old dad knew one tune, and that was German’s "The Yeomen of England". Like Arthur Sullivan, it seems, German always resented being driven away from the serious composing role he believed himself to be destined for, though of course his success in the operetta sphere has not stood a comparable test of time. For the 19th-century strand, Wilson kept the orchestra sweet and crisp, with delicious turns of dance phrasing for Sullivan’s Overture di Ballo. Frankly the Iolanthe Overture has a bit more substance, but when else can this oddball one-off be presented?

Everything burst into Technicolor with the horn fanfares of the old Forsyte Saga theme, previously known as the "Halcyon Days" first movement of Coates’s The Three Elizabeths Suite. Great tunes, vigorous contrasts; but better still is the way the oboe’s Scots ballad for the central "Springtime in Angus" turns out to be a cue for all manner of naturally evolving rhapsodies (the central sweep of strings was exactly what you'd expect from a conductor and orchestra who've emulated the MGM sound so lushly).

Personally I'd rather have had The Three Bears than The Three Elizabeths - Coates's symphonic fairytales are miracles of invention - but as Wilson candidly said in brief platform chat with slick presenter Petroc Trelawny, Coates (the jacket of whose autobiography is pictured right, with a quotation of the Knightsbridge March theme) wrote only good light music, no bad symphonies and concertos, and as a result there's hardly a dud in 50 years of composition. So it proved with the cheery syncopations of London Calling, superior stuff melodically to Haydn Wood's intriguingly orchestrated London Cameos Suite. In a second half of lollipops, there was quirky variety and a rather more complicated background history not touched upon in Trelawny's bright and breezy narrative: if you think you've heard Robert Farnon's  Jumping Bean, it's probably as the virtually plagiarised offshoot theme for Hancock's Half Hour, composed by jazz musician Wally Stott - who first turned up with Farnon's Portrait of a Flirt "reworked" as an homage to Farnon, A Canadian in London. But didn't the programme tell us that this little kink was written by Angela Morley? That's because Stott became Morley after his sex change in 1972.

There was no such trouble placing Vivian "Spread a Little Happiness" Ellis's Coronation Scot, even if some of us are too young to remember its incarnation as the theme tune to Francis Durbridge's Paul Temple radio dramas. Likewise the encore: as Wilson pointed out, neither the name, Non Stop, nor the composer, John Malcolm, would mean much to us, but the chattery music did, as the ITN news theme from the 1950s to the 1970s, signature tune for the next generation as the Knightsbridge March, official finale material here and striking me as partly borrowed from Sibelius's Karelia Suite Alla marcia, had been to In Town Tonight listeners before it. Next time, though, an all-Coates programme, please - and the Prommers, whether or not you like their bobbing and swaying to classical pops, will be the right audience for it. And I hold to the theory that took shape earlier this year: that the BBCSO should go for training with Wilson every couple of months, because it does wonders for the vibrancy of the string sound especially, and it's vital for their romantic repertoire.

• Further Light Fantastic events on the Southbank today, including a Tea Dance accompanied by John Wilson and musicians
• Listen to this concert for the next seven days on the BBC Radio 3 iPlayer. It has also been filmed for future transmission on BBC Four - date TBC, but probably some time around the Christmas season
• Listen to Edward Seckerson's podcast interview with John Wilson on theartsdesk
  

Hear Eric Coates conduct his Knightsbridge March

Hear Robert Farnon's Jumping Bean

And last but not least: John Malcolm's Non Stop as seen/heard on ITN

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