---

Programme Note

Read about this work at www.maxopus.com

• Introduction : The Boy Friend; I could be happy with you
• Sur la plage
• A Room in Bloomsbury
• I Could Be Happy With You
• The ‘You don’t want to play with me’ Blues
• Poor Little Pierrette
• Polly’s Dream : Free Fantasy on tunes from the boy friend


The original music by Sandy Wilson for THE BOY FRIEND, a fifties pastiche of the twenties, needs no explanation. This potpourri consists of a selection of my arrangements for Ken Russell’s films. I wrote ‘Polly’s Dream’ as the accompaniment to a fantasy sequence, in which Ken Russell parodies himself – a network of visual cross references. The music, similarly, is full of references, and contains a new Charleston and Fox Trot that I wrote specially. The music is cored for a ‘period’ band, including ukelele. There are piano interludes between each number.

I conducted the first performance of the work on 11 December 1971 in the Queen Elizabeth Hall, given by the Fires of London.


© Peter Maxwell Davies.