Arnold reviews

Arnold reviews

Legacy – A Tribute to Dennis Brain

Ben Goldscheider (horn), James Gilchrist (tenor), Huw Watkins (piano) (Three World Records)
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Arnold: The Dancing Master

Ed Lyon, Fiona Kimm, et al (voices); BBC Concert Orchestra/John Andrews (Resonus)
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Mozart in London

Rebecca Bottone, Eleanor Dennis, Anna Devin, Martene Grimson, Ana Maria Labin, Helen Sherman, Ben Johnson, Robert Murray; Steven Devine; The Mozartists/Ian Page (Signum)
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Walton: Viola Concerto (1961 version); Sonata for String Orchestra (arr. Walton/Arnold); Partita

James Ehnes; BBC Symphony Orchestra/Edward Gardner (Chandos)
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Flute Concertos: Arnold • Ibert • Nielsen

Clara Andrada (flute); Frankfurt Radio Symphony/Jaime Martín (Ondine)
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Walton • L Berkeley • Arnold • Dowland • Britten

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. 

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Le Miroir de Musique perform Arnold & Hugo de Lantins

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).

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The Roots of Heaven, David Copperfield: Classic Film Scores by Sir Malcolm Arnold

Performed by the Moscow Symphony Orchestra and conducted by William Stromberg.
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Arnold; Elgar; Simpson

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.

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Arnold • field

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.

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C Arnold

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.

 

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Arnold: Cello Concerto

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.

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Arnold: Homage to the Queen Suite

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.

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Vaughan Williams/Arnold: Symphony No. 9; Symphony No. 3

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.

 

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Arnold: Concerto for Piano Duet; Concerto for Two Pianos (three hands); Overture: Beckus the Dandipratt; Fantasy on a Theme of John Field

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).

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Jacob, Arnold, Bowen, Gipps & Vinter

David Pyatt was only 20 or so when these recordings were made in the mid 1990s, and it’s good that they’re finally seeing the light of day. His playing is musical and easily virtuosic – qualities on display in all these works, three of which were originally written for Dennis Brain. The Gordon Jacob Concerto has a pleasant lyricism in sections of all three movements, and a theme showing off fast repeated notes in the finale, though none of it is particularly memorable.
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Goossens¥ Dring¥ Rodney Bennett, McGuire, Samuel, Musgrave & Arnold

Flute, oboe and piano make an attractive if lightweight combination, and the same description applies to this selection of 20th-century British music for it. Eugene Goossens’s Pastorale et Arlequinade has a somewhat pleasing touch of French Impressionism; Madeleine Dring’s Trio is Frenchified more in the pastiching manner of Poulenc; Malcolm Arnold’s Suite Bourgeoise is a recent rediscovery from his student years, with witty parodies of a diverse range of styles including tango, Viennese waltz and big-band music.
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Arnold: String Quartets Nos 1 & 2; Phantasy (Vita Abundans)

The Phantasy, written when Arnold was 20, already shows his hallmarks: there’s an opening pizzicato with a cool, bluesy theme over the top, then a more passionate section which turns to melancholy and anger. Strangely, the slightly later First Quartet more readily recalls earlier models, particularly in its Bartókian opening movement and following Scherzo. It also shares with the later Bartók quartets an economy of means – this is lean music with no wasted notes, and it’s strikingly performed, with concentration in the playing and detail in the recording.
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Arnold, Lambert

With well-received discs of music by Gurney and Howard Ferguson, a Frank Bridge series underway, and now this – recorded in Constant Lambert’s centenary year and presumably intended as an 85th birthday present for Sir Malcolm Arnold – Mark Bebbington is fast becoming the knight in shining armour to the damsel in distress that is neglected 20th-century piano music.
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Arnold: Beckus the Dandipratt; Suite: The Inn of the Sixth Happiness; Flourish for a 21st Birthday; Symphony No. 6; Philharmonic Conerto

This live recording from a 2004 Royal Festival Hall concert begins with Beckus the Dandipratt, the overture that the LPO (with Arnold as principal trumpet) recorded under van Beinum in the 1940s. Handley finds as much cheekiness as in that version, and more than the composer in his slow and earthbound 1991 recording. And The Inn of the Sixth Happiness Suite is a reminder that Arnold could produce a sweeping film theme to rival Hollywood, though it’s in the second movement – ‘Romantic Interlude’ – that his ability to write a touching melody
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Arnold; Milhaud; Vaugh Williams

Malcolm Arnold’s The Return of Odysseus was composed in 1976 for a concert of the Schools’ Music Association. Patric Dickinson’s specially written text tells the story, and the back story, in simple, breezy language, though it’s rather constrained by the absence of any solo parts. Arnold’s setting is concise and clearly organised, and offers young performers some catchily singable tunes, occasionally recalling Britten’s St Nicolas, and one wonderful if all too brief moment of aleatoric speech when Odysseus slays Penelope’s hapless suitors.
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Arnold: Beckus the Dandipratt Overture; Tam O'Shanter Overture; A Grand Grand Festival Overture; Peterloo Overture; Robert Kett Overture

Listening to an hour and quarter’s worth of overtures by Malcolm Arnold turned out to be an unexpectedly dispiriting experience. Certainly the Grand Grand Overture is great fun, with its vacuum cleaners and rifles and Beethovenian big finish; Beckus the Dandipratt, Arnold’s breakthrough piece, is nimbly written; Tam O’ Shanter is a witty piece of storytelling; and the Peterloo massacre is depicted effectively if without much subtlety.
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Arnold, Coates, A Wood, Ellis, Bath, Farnon, C Williams, etc

This looks like an attempt to make what the marketing people would call ‘The Only British Light Music Album You’ll Ever Need’. All the well-known radio and TV signature tunes are here: What the Papers Say, The Archers, Desert Island Discs and, if your memory goes far enough back, Dr Finlay’s Casebook, Children’s Favourites, Workers’ Playtime and Dick Barton – Special Agent. Most of the other pieces are equally familiar; even Charles Williams’s Heart O’ London, not otherwise in the catalogue, is a pot-pourri of famous tunes (and a pretty feeble one).
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Arnold, Strauss, Glazunov, Schuller, Sibelius, Dukas & Elgar

When a recording features a large brick building in central London on its cover, it suggests that this World Tour will not be an exotic voyage. But as a recruiting tract for the Royal Academy of Music it works well. The playing is clean-cut and athletic, match fit and hungry for success, bursting with energy and bristling with technical achievement. It probably represents the best recording to date of Gunther Schuller’s Symphony for Brass: long, complex and almost inevitably denied a recording by expensive professional players.
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