A Christmas playlist from Hugh Philpott

I wanted to bring you an extra playlist especially for the season. Something which avoids mawkish reworkings of the Great American ‘Holiday’ Songbook by crooners past and present (much as I admire them), and also sidesteps the enforced seasonal jollity of Rutter and Chilcott (love them both in their place, but not for today). I shall leave all of that to Classic FM and ‘Now That’s What I Call the Hundredth Version of White Christmas’.

We are going outside for this one. I’m dragging you away from your cosy fireside and bottle of Chocolate Orange Baileys in order to get you out into the elements. We are going on a sleigh ride and maybe a bit of sledging, too. If you are lucky, you will also enjoy a turn on a musical box and spin on a motorbike, while making footprints in the snow. Some of the pieces you will know well. They are instantly recognizable icons of this repertoire. But I hope some others will be new and I encourage you to explore the composers further.

One of the heroes of the season is up first. Track one has to be Leroy Anderson’s Sleigh Ride. I prefer the orchestral version, but the 1950 song with lyrics by Parrish works well too.

As Anderson shows us, sleighride-inspired music usually does what it says on the tin. You get the rhythm of horses in harness through bright major keys (there are one or two modulations, but unlike the carols, these pieces favour major keys), jingling bells, crisp percussion (including whips and wood blocks), and a lilting two-beat pulse, whether in 2/4 or 4/4. In a word it moves along with a trot and canter and has sometimes been known to break into a gallop.

My second sleighride-inspired track is the opening movement of Sviridov’s Blizzard suite from the score he wrote for the 60s Soviet film of the same title. The heroine is eloping by troika, the horse drawn sleigh we often imagine when thinking of these pieces. Of course, the heavy snow featured in such stories is a rarity for us in southern England, but when it comes, it comes and is often described as the Beast from the East. This references the east or north-east wind which starts on the Central Russian Steppe where Sviridov’s heroine mounted on a troika made her getaway. It then makes a beeline across the English Channel where its icy dry air picks up moisture, turning it into snow as it hits the air above the Downs.

That’s just what happened in late November 2010. I remember vividly the chilly olfactory silence, which comes when the mercury dips below zero. The fresh tang of ozone and oxygen dominates the air, and the slightest breeze becomes a stinging blast. All the telltale signs of something coming. That year the South Downs soon disappeared under a blanket of snow: from Bishopstone to Cuckmere, and beyond, the roads became impassable. It was exactly that snowy downland scene which inspired Howard Blake’s score for the 1982 animated film The Snowman. Let’s hear The Music Box Dance and Motorbike Gallop, with plenty of movement like a troika hurtling through the snow, and then staying with Howard Blake we can go sledging with Grandpa.

We lived in Seaford at the time. I remember well walking out in the moonlight after one of the heavy snowfalls. I want to say parked cars were abandoned on the residential streets, but I think they were simply parked and covered. Their owners sensibly waited for the snow and ice to thaw before venturing back out in them. In any case the roads weren’t clear, so no one was going anywhere. All we could see were the prints of a few cats and foxes. To capture that stillness, Debussy’s Des Pas Sur La Neige is what we need. This is that moment of olfactory silence I mentioned. It’s when you can enjoy the full sense of that tranquility which only a snowy day can deliver.

Times such as those do allow us to change routines and find alternative solutions to everyday tasks. It is my habit to see positive opportunities rather than negative obligations in such situations. Our underused bright orange sledge, which had lurked at the back of the garage since moving in, got its long-anticipated outing. It was a relic from two decades earlier when we lived in North America and luckily it had been saved during a big clear out the year before and kept ‘just in case’. Musically though we are staying in Russia, this time Prokofiev and the iconic Sleigh Ride from his film score for Lieutenant Kije.

Our very short sleigh ride, or more properly sledge-pull (with me doing the pulling), involved a trip to the local convenience store for essentials and treats for a fireside tea. I remember as responsible pedestrians that we even waited for the lights at the crossing over the A259 near the leisure centre, even though nothing was passing that way on that day. It may not have been quite a horse-drawn troika, or even a toboggan hewn from ancient pine, but it did lend itself to a certain romantic imagery. To keep this going I am going to turn to Frederick Delius, an unlikely choice for winter since he is usually associated with bucolic summer scenes showing his strength in drawing soundscapes of green fields, village life and sunshine. He did however write a beautifully sprightly standalone piece sometimes known as Winter Time, but also now more regularly called Sleigh Ride. It is just lovely.

To finish the list and get you back to the fireside, I am going to pick something truly born to our region. A piece by the great, but sadly often forgotten, Frank Chacksfield, who came from Battle. In his day Frank was up there with Mantovani, Coates and Farnon, but he and his brand of music went out of fashion. I would really like people to start playing and listening to more of the splendid British Light Music repertoire. We can talk about that another time, but for now let’s concentrate on Frank and particularly his own take on the sleigh ride. Mostly he was known for his lush arrangements, when he divided the strings into multiple parts creating a Hollywood-style texture and set beautifully mellow and restrained parts for the brass. But now and again he found time to compose something original and Alpine Sleigh Ride is one such piece. Strangely, I had to live in the United States to get to know this and the music of Frank Chacksfield, and I am glad I did. I am sure you will hear some familiar musical quotations in there and while it owes much in its arrangement to the influences of the Golden Age of Hollywood, I assure you this is music with its roots definitely on the southern edge of the Weald. I hope you enjoy this brisk outing in the snow. Wrap up warm if you do.