Veneziana is a well-produced, well-executed album that more properly comes under the somewhat vague heading of ‘Light Music’, and in a different lifetime might have found a home on the BBC’s Light Programme (replaced by Radio Two in 1967). Here it would have rubbed shoulders with the likes of Franz Lehar, Eric Coates, Ronald Binge, Ron Goodwin, Stanley Black, Leroy Anderson and others, such as Manuel and his Music of the Mountains, comic songs by Flanders and Swann, the odd bit of Gilbert and Sullivan and quite a bit of Mantovani.

It is easy to imagine tracks from Veneziana – eight originals, with titles such as ‘Romeo and Steve,’ ‘Monteverdi and his Ideas,” ‘Sibelius in Venice,’ and ‘Mozart Loses His Mojo,’ – alongside Ronald Binge’s ‘Sailing By,’ Eric Coates’ 'Knightsbridge March’ or Mantovani’s ‘Charmaine.’ This is not to belittle Rantala’s music, which is perhaps music in the distant spirit of jazz, rather than jazz itself; after all, Binge’s ‘Sailing By’ was composed 60 years ago, and Coates’ ‘Knightsbridge March’ was written in 1932, and they are still regularly played on the classical radio.