Music maestro

For there, midway through an apparently ordinary afternoon, I found Mr Barratt and two friends resplendent in bow-ties and dinner jackets engaged in an animated conversation about conjuring up a magical power from the past.

Admittedly most of the animation was coming from Mr Barrett, a dapper 64-year-old Yorkshireman with a spring in his step, a sparkle in his eye and a passionate love for the music of the late king of easy listening - the bandleader and one-time Bournemouth resident Annunzio Mantovani.

For the power he intends to resurrect is the full shimmering sound of the Mantovani Orchestra, the cascading strings that proved so massively popular back in the 1940s, '50s and '60s with million-selling hits like Charmaine, Greensleeves and Moulin Rouge.

Paul Barrett's guests - exotically-named but quietly-spoken violinist Franck Leprince and dignified but taciturn conductor Sam Newgarth - are the key players in this long-dreamed-of project that finally reaches fruition next month with a gala concert at Lighthouse in Poole.

On January 27, these three men will lead 45 hand-picked musicians - many of them from the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra - on to the stage for a Magic of Mantovani concert that will lovingly recreate the full musical might of the maestro who, at his height, even outsold The Beatles.

It will be a lavish affair, sponsored by Bentley and introduced by the actress Alexandra Bastedo and the broadcaster Ed Stewart. For Mr Barrett, a former builders' merchant and semi-professional percussionist, this is literally a dream come true.

"I have been preparing for this for decades," admits the man who says that meeting Mantovani after a concert in his native Sheffield back in 1958 was a major turning point in his life.

For the 13-year-old Paul, the sound of Mantovani's string arrangements and, in particular, the work of his long-standing percussionist, Charles Botterill, would prove life-changing.

While his schoolfriends were rocking to Elvis, he was steeping himself in the light orchestral sounds of Mantovani.

More significantly, perhaps, he made contact with Botterill, who, impressed by the boy's enthusiasm, took it upon himself to tutor him in percussion.

For several years, young Paul was a regular guest at the Botterill family home, learning at the feet of the master and eventually buying many of his original instruments.

Over the years he perfected every percussion arrangement in the massive Mantovani repertoire, and kept his hand in by combining his work as a director of the family business with a position as percussionist with the leading Sheffield theatre orchestra, regularly playing in the pit for big visiting productions like Carousel, Oklahoma and South Pacific.

But he really yearned to play for Mantovani. "I know it's terrible but I used to pray that Charles Botterill would be taken ill, and I would be able to step in at the last minute and save the day," he tells me.

He chuckles at the audacity of the thought but points out that he could have done it. He knew every percussion part inside out.

Waving a hand around his music room, he indicates the orginal Mantovani Orchestra instruments he has acquired over the years: "Look there's Charles' tubular bells, his chimes, his cymbals. I've got his castanets over there."

He hesitates a moment "That's not actually his glockenspiel, but I found out who made it and had that one made exactly the same ..."

Despite being awesomely well equipped for the job, it wasn't to be. Botterill stayed with Mantovani to the end and never missed a gig.

As he finally gets his chance to perform the music he has been rehearsing for years, Paul says he knows that many people are unaware of what a huge star Annunzio Mantovani was.

The son of the concertmaster of the famous La Scala Orchestra in Milan, he was born in Venice and moved with his family to England as a child. He trained at Trinity College of Music and went on to play concert halls, ballrooms and hotels, becoming popular on the BBC.

He started to enjoy international success in the 1930s but it was when romantic mood music found a natural audience during the Second World War that things really took off.

By the 1950s, Mantovani was massive. In one year alone he received 700 proposals of marriage. He was also the first performer to sell a million records in stereo.

Eventually the pressure of relentless world tours took their toll, and in the 1960s and 1970s Mantovani (Monty to his friends) moved with wife Winifred to a house they named Greensleeves in Burton Road, Branksome Park.

It was a retreat that allowed him to escape from the constant demands of the London music business. Local people still remember seeing Monty, who they say was a charming man, shopping in Waitrose.

Paul Barrett was one of those on the receiving end of that charm. In the 1970s, years before he himself would move to Dorset, he was holidaying in Bournemouth and plucked up courage to knock on Monty's door. To his delight the maestro invited him in, entertained him and played him his latest LP.

"He had not been well and, though he didn't know it at the time, he was suffering from the early stages of Alzheimers," recalls Paul.

Their meeting came at a time when a combination of ill-health, age and changing fashions were rapidly bringing Mantovani's glory days to a close. "I think he knew the end was near. He listened to that music with a tear in his eye," says Paul.

Mantovani died, aged 74, in 1980, but for Paul Barrett the music lives on.

• The Magic of Mantovani will be at Lighthouse in Poole on January 27. For more information about Annunzio Mantovani log on to hallowquest.com/mantiindex