Fantasy Waltz

Desperate Chase

With Roger Roger (his real name, not a clever pseudonym) we are still in Paris. A French equivalent of Ernst Fischer but immensely more prolific, Roger was one of the leading composers both of film music and of what in its day was known as “mood music” – short pieces that publishers liked to have on their shelves to supply to radio and TV producers in search of a particular atmosphere for their dramas, documentaries and commercials. He is known to have recorded close on 20 albums of them. The tuneful Fantasy Waltz, with its witty and its far from Viennese middle section featuring pizzicato strings and a solo trumpet, probably did not orignate as mood music. Desperate Chase on the other hand, which follows after a short pause, surely did.