Songs include
Junk
A Leaf
Haymakers
Midwife
Spiral
Warm And Beautiful
My Love
Maybe I'm Amazed
Calico Skies
Golden Earth Girl
Somedays
Tuesday
She's My Baby
The Lovely Linda

Performers
London Symphony Orchestra
Andrea Quinn (conductor)

Loma Mar Quartet:
Krista Bennion Feeney (first violin)
Anca Nicolau (second violin)
Joanna Hood (viola)
Myron Lutzke (cello)


Sir Paul McCartney's lyrical skills are familiar to virtually everyone in the world, thanks to his songwriting partnership with John Lennon during the 1960s. Lennon's cynicism and punchy lines were nicely balanced by McCartney's more flowing melodies, often with a modal feel.

McCartney is clearly still an active chap - he was in the news recently for his forthcoming fatherhood with new wife Heather Mills - and has been applying himself in recent years to a more classical approach to music. His Liverpool Oratorio of a decade back was seen by mainstream classical critics as a highly creditable effort, and topped the classical charts in the US and the UK. That was followed by Standing Stone, and in this programme we can enjoy several short pieces written in his light classical style, from his third classically-oriented CD, Working Classical, with orchestrations and arrangements by Richard Rodney Bennett, Michael Thomas, Jonathan Tunick, Jonathan Fraser and others. Most of the works were written before the death of his wife Linda, but the tender and wistful nature of many of them serves as a tribute to her memory.

This video is the recording of the premiere of Working Classical in Liverpool at the Royal Philharmonic Hall, on 16 Oct 1999. In a short introduction, McCartney talks about his Liverpool roots, over footage of the town.