Look at the dates of
these Dances. They neatly bracket and
scatter across the period in which Arnold
was writing symphonies. The First Symphony
was written in 1949 while the Ninth
was written in 1986.
While the opp. 27,
33, 59 and 91 are bluff and poetic creatures,
the Irish Dances proclaim a caustic
melancholy as well as some disillusion
clothed in neo-Handelian colours; listen
to the Commodo and the Piacevole.
Both dances are troubled and have much
in common with Warlock or Bridge or
Goossens. The poetry is still there
but more oblique, soured and borne into
a world which had become chilly and
unwelcoming. In the Welsh Dances
there is a return to the ebullience
and spirited gestures of the English
Dance set with fewer psychological
ambiguities than are presented by the
Cornish and Irish examples. I am not
absolutely sure that this final set
carries the conviction of the earlier
groups. There is some sense of going
through the motions rather than of gripping
engagement.
The vintage orchestral
dances run a wide gamut. They are variously
salty, beguiling, salacious, brave,
gentle, dashing, lusty, macho, tipsy,
graceful and triumphant. The whole orchestra
gets a work-out. Arnold’s mastery of
orchestration is never in doubt. The
woodwind and brass are specially blessed.
Arnold was of course a topflight trumpeter
just like Arthur Butterworth, another
extraordinary symphonist.
Just occasionally in
this music we may scent a tepid whiff
of 1950s commercialism but this is a
transient blemish amid so much character
and individuality. The Highland laddie
in the Vivace of the Scottish
Dances has surely stayed a mite
too long at the still. On the other
hand Andrew Penny presses forward faster
than I would have hoped in the Allegretto
- one of the loveliest melodies
and most tender treatments in all classical
music. Having, like Vaughan Williams,
found the equivalent of his own Lake
in the Woods Arnold would surely
have wished us to linger longer. The
composer made the Allegretto last
a delectable 3.45 in 1962 when he recorded
it with the LPO (Phoenix PHCD 102) and
a languidly relished 4.02, again with
the LPO, in the mid-1980s (Lyrita SRCD201).
It is interesting to note this tendency
of the composer to adopt a more leisurely
and broadly relished approach in his
final recordings. Look at his other
Lyrita recording of the same vintage.
SRCD200,
which contains only his Symphony No.
4, runs to an elephantine 54.11 (frankly
glorious rather like Bernstein’s Enigma)
yet Hickox gets it to 40.36 on Chandos
CHAN 9290. Andrew Penny on Naxos despatches
the work in about 39 minutes.
The ‘march of the saints’
in the con moto e sempre senza parodia
of the Cornish Dances looks
forwards to the great ‘Sally Army’ march
in the Eighth Symphony (for me a treasured
favourite among the nine - occupying
a position in Arnold’s Nine equivalent
to Six in Sibelius’s Seven) from 1986.
The Bryden Thomson
set with the Philharmonia includes all
the dances except the Welsh ones. It
is on Chandos (CHAN 8867) and is almost
as resplendently recorded as the Lyrita.
It sports the booziest bassoon solo
I have ever heard in the Vivace
of the Scottish Dances. In general
however Thomson keeps the music moving
along rather unfeelingly. He lacks the
rheumy-eyed indulgence of the composer.
Things are much better in the Cornish
Dances but even so the English
Dances should have been allowed
more ‘world enough and time’.
For ‘complete’ sets
the competition comes head-on between
Lyrita and Naxos. The Lyrita is given
a recording that is nothing short of
spectacular: transparency, oomph, gloriously
firm bass attack and silky string sound.
And if the composer’s tempi are distended
the music carries it pretty much flawlessly.
The music in some cases positively basks
in the additional time the composer’s
approach permits.
The Queensland Orchestra
are not the equal of the LPO nor is
the Naxos technical team, on this occasion,
able to capture the sheer thrill delivered
by the Lyrita engineers. Of course it
will only cost you a little to have
both the Lyrita and the Naxos, The Penny/Queensland
disc is bound to be in demand anyway
for the Welsh Dances which are
otherwise unavailable.
I had better not pull
my punches. If you are looking for one
disc with all but one of the Arnold
dances then the Lyrita
stands head and shoulders high. If you
can find it ... get it.
Rob Barnett
See also review
by Colin Clarke
Queensland Symphony Orchestra/Andrew Penny
