Mantovani - Christmas Magic

Annunzio Paolo Mantovani died in March of 1980 at the age of 74. Before The Beatles dethroned him, Mantovani was Britian's most successful act. He was the king of lush orchestra arrangements, or more to the point, the syrupy strings that were all the rage once upon a time. It's not like people didn't eat it up. Reading up on Mantovani, because that's what I do ... and what better place to start than to skim over a wiki entry, he was a pretty big deal. According to the book British Hit Singles & Albums, he was the first to sell over a million stereo albums, and it would seem he cranks out records like a sausage maker, in 1959 Mantovani had six albums in the US Top 30 at the same time. Goodness.

Mantovani released a couple of Christmas albums back in the '50s, but this collection appears to be new recordings by The Mantovani Orchestra, conducted by long time arranger Roland Shaw. So even if Mantovani was no longer around, his arranger and orchestra were so it still counts. However, this is merely conjecture on my part as there really is very little to give away when this was recorded. I don't have any of his other Christmas records, and frankly I don't have the time or inclination to look them up to do an A / B to see where they came from. Does it matter? The songs run the gamut of familiar standards - contemporary and sacred. If you like lush string arrangements that can gently play in the background this is for you. There are no jarring moments of artistic dissonance, or clever reinterpretations of the classics. This is simply a loving retelling of the classics with a lot of strings.

Me, I'm sort of torn. This is the kind of music that is more fitted to the kind of stuff that was piped into malls in the '70s when I was a little kid. It was the soundtrack of every elevator ride. If I was to play this for my kids they'd roll their eyes and beg for mercy. Which is sort of apropos as it's sort of how I felt when I was their age, but nostalgia is a bugger - this is also deeply ingrained into my holiday DNA.

Last Christmas I'd found another similarly string heavy album Living Strings & Living Voices that played with much of the same source material, heck let's not kid ourselves ALL OF THE CHRISTMAS RECORDS lean into the same batch of songs ... over, and over, and over and I tend to love them regardless. Although they were mostly in the same lane, I like Mantovani a little more. I suspect this is due as much to object permanence as anything, but there aren't any unexpected moments here, just the hits delivered with a flourish.

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