Arnold reviews

A key touchstone for classical guitarists in Britain and beyond is the extraordinary legacy of Julian Bream who, through determined commissioning, transformed a repertory otherwise ‘stuffed with unnourishing bon-bons,’ as Wilfred Mellors tartly – but accurately – observed in 1968. The results not only engaged a wider audience for the guitar, but established the instrument as an exciting resource for contemporary composers. 

This seems to be the first disc devoted to secular works by these two musicians, active in North Italy in the 1420s. (There’s a Ricercar CD of sacred music by Arnold.) The instrumental performances include an energetic basse dance with sparkling vielles (Amor servir), a clamorous ensemble of bagpipes (Chanter ne scay), and a playful display of woodwind embellishments (in Mirar no posso).

Like the full English breakfast, the full English string orchestra has a distinctive character all its own. Listening to the Elgar here, we sense the Introduction and Allegro lying over the next Malvern hill. Echoes arise of his symphonies, too. But we’re actually listening to his 1918 String Quartet, most sensitively expanded for larger forces by David Matthews.

These three works by Malcolm Arnold all date from the mid-1970s, when, as Piers Burton-Page says in his informative note, the composer was plagued by mental illness. Symphony No. 7 is certainly disturbed, and disturbing. Its first movement sets off in a bout of hysteria and exposes raw nerves all the way through; its slow movement erupts at one point into a nightmarish crescendo; and its finale tries but fails to find refuge in Irish dance tunes.

Although affectionately dubbed ‘the father of Norwegian music’, Carl Arnold was German. Born three years after the death of Mozart, he pursued in his youth the life of an itinerant piano virtuoso. He cultivated particularly cordial ‘ententes’ with St Petersburg and Poland, yet it was not until 1848 that he finally made landfall in Norway. Any ‘paternity’ claims are surely founded on the way in which he encouraged music as a profession in Norway, since his own music retained its German identity.

Only one of these works appears to be entirely Malcolm Arnold’s own penmanship. The others have been expertly brought to the state recorded here by David Ellis – ‘performing editions’ of the Cello Concerto and Recorder Fantasy, while the Flute Concertino is Ellis’s orchestration of the Flute Sonatina, and the Saxophone Concerto an arrangement of Arnold’s early Piano Sonata of 1942.

The Royal Ballet’s post-war golden era saw one composer after another being commissioned for new scores, Malcolm Arnold among them. His full-length Homage to the Queen, with its divertissement-strewn scenario about the Four Elements, was first performed on Coronation  Day in 1953.

Take the two lovers of an 18th-century Spanish señora, conceal them in a clock cabinet, set the whole comical fiasco to music of unprecedented delicacy; then record it under the auspices of the composer with a characterful line-up of performers, and you have the basis of a truly historic recording – funny, eloquent and atmospheric.

Why did the English music scene have such a problem recognising that, in Malcolm Arnold, it had an English Shostakovich in its midst? There’s so much in common between the two composers – above all, the wild and unpredictable veering between chirpy merriment (which inwardly it isn’t) and haunting tragedy (which it certainly is).