The famous CWS (Manchester) Band
Conductor: Alex Mortimer
Soloists: Derek Garside, Sydney Poole
Fontana Recordings: TFL 5096

The recent death of Derek Garside has broken one of the last performer links to a band that has long held almost mythical status to those who heard them in their prime, as well as those who weren’t as lucky.

This Fontana recording from 1960 (the second in a series) offers a gossamer strand to the players and conductor still a few months from their first Open win together and two years from the indelible ‘fame’ of their ‘Force of Destiny’ victory at the Royal Albert Hall. It still echoes though with that sense of emerging greatness. 

Character and vitality

Six years into his capricious tenure Alex Mortimer is flamboyantly idiosyncratic in performances of strident character and vitality. Garside is his cornerstone adherent.

His playing is of complete bravura confidence - a level of controlled virtuosity that simply speaks for itself.

Garside is his cornerstone adherent. His playing is of complete bravura confidence - a level of controlled virtuosity that simply speaks for itself.

Not surprisingly the focus of his excellence remains central to almost every piece on the recording; the cadenza in ‘Light Cavalry’  played with insouciant flair, the solo in ‘Resurgam’  a piece of fire and brimstone pulpit oratory, the lead in ‘Slavonic Rhapsody’  a showcase of ostentatious glitz.  He even carries the peels in ‘Cornet Carillon’. 

Mortimer is loquacious in his sleeve-note appreciation (in contrast to the other soloist Sydney Poole) - describing Garside’s rendition on his favourite solo ‘Cleopatra’,  as putting a ‘very naughty’ lady ‘firmly in her place’.  

The sentiment may well be misplaced today, but the playing is certainly not – a cast iron technique matched by a cast iron sound. He is brilliant.

Cutting precision

To the modern-day ear the band has a rugged, hardened polish, brightly toned (still in high pitch) and occasionally wayward in intonation, but unmistakenly sharpened under their mercurial MD with a diamond edge of cutting precision. 

You would be hard pressed to hear better technical playing than that on ‘Slavonic Rhapsody’, even if the musical character portrayed leaves you with a wry smile of occasional bafflement. 

You would be hard pressed to hear better technical playing than that on ‘Slavonic Rhapsody’,  even if the musical character portrayed leaves you with a wry smile of occasional bafflement. 

So too with ‘Czech Polka’,  ‘The Frogs (of Aristophanes)’  and ‘Resurgam’  – each packed with dramatized impulses and elasticity, whilst ‘Light Cavalry’  is a gung-ho headlong gallop towards the cannons, sabres waving in the sun. 

It is of course playing very much of its era and especially of its conductor.

Garside though remains a timeless icon.

Iwan Fox 

Play list:

Side 1:
1. Overture: Light Cavalry (Suppe arr. Greenwood)
2. Cleopatra (Damare)
Soloist: Derek Garside

3. Czech Polka (J. Strauss arr. F. Wright)
4. Resurgam (Eric Ball)

Side 2:
1. Slavonic Rhapsody (Friedman arr. D. Wright)
2. Robin Adair (Hartmann)
Soloist: Sydney Poole

3. Overture: The Frogs (of Aristophanes) (Granville Bantock arr. F. Wright) 
4. Cornet Carillon (Ronald Binge)