Search - Trevor Duncan, Slovak Radio Sym Orch, Penny :: British Light Music

I have waited over 30 years to hear this CD!

K. Farrington | Missegre, France | 08/14/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Like most of my generation, Sunday evenings at 7:25 in the 1960's meant watching 'Doctor Findlay's Casebook', a low budget TV drama that revolved around a little Scottish village practice at Tannoch Brae. I lived in the depths of South London and this little escape into a world of brogue and rural character made me feel life was worth living, for I could break away from my gray humdrum life to live in such a community. The incidental music to this TV series was all from parts of Trevor Duncan's 'A Little Suite'. The best parts of the drama were its depiction of pathos, a terminally ill patient, an old time boxer suffering from dementia, etc. We have been given many times the Theme Music to the programme, the 'March' but were never given the rest of the Suite. I contacted the BBC who could not help me in obtaining a recording but who confirmed all the incidental music of this programme was from this source. In the more pathos ridden storylines, they would use the 'Lullaby', a beautifully sad piece of writing that underpinned and reinforced the action on screen. I remember it was even used in a plot where the hero was suffering from depresion himself. Some tunes touch your soul and this one did mine, for I searched in vain from the late 1960's and every time I found Trevor Duncan's 'Little Suite', 'the March' was recorded alone in a compilation recording. Last week I was idly searching Amazon's database and saw that now we have the complete work available and I bought it immediately, anxiously awaiting the mailman...and it arrived! I cannot tell you how much I love this CD. Every piece reveals a true master of the Light Music idiom. The gentle melodic lines, the serene strings and chortling woodwind with tempered but effective brass are offset by an amazingly imaginative use of the percussion. I discovered that we have here a composer who was reasonably prolific and like Oliver Twist I can only ask: May I have some more please? As well as this piece we are treated to a whole range of little masterpieces and I say this in the best sense of the word, for the Mona Lisa is a little work and this comparison is just. Duncan's sense of melody is so powerful and the orchestration keeps your attention firmly fixed on this wonderful CD. The CD notes also revealed to me the composer's real name was Trebilco and like me he was born in Camberwell, South London...far away from Tannoch brae!"

Dr Finlay's Slovakian Casebook

M. S. Aitchison | Christchurch, New Zealand | 01/02/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"A very good version of many Trevor Duncan compositions. Possibly the Ron Goodwin version ("Adventure!", 1966) of the Girl From Corsica is better, and the stereo mixing of the March from a Little Suite (the theme from the original Doctor Finlay's Casebook series) could have been a little less dynamic, but still this is a very good version.

As I understand it, the composer worked for the BBC at a time when they weren't permitted to have their own music appear in the TV series credits for some reason, hence the alias of Duncan. Whatever the background to the composition, the "Little Suite" and the A.J. Cronin-inspired stories were perfect together in the TV series, one of the best drama series of all time (in my opinion), and this version of the music is certainly not a disappointment. It is a pity the other pieces are so rarely found, but that makes this collection all the more valuable."