Sir Malcolm ARNOLD (1921-2006)
Grand Concerto Gastronomique Op.76 (1961) [15:06]
Symphony No.9 in D major Op.128 (1986) [42:31]
Anna Gorbachyova-Ogilvie (soprano, one track of Grand Concerto…), Liepāja Symphony Orchestra/John Gibbons
rec. 29 July 2021, St Mary’s, Perivale, Middlesex, UK (Grand Concerto…), 14-16 June 2021, Great Amber Concert Hall, Liepāja, Latvia (Symphony)
TOCCATA CLASSICS TOCC0613 [57:40]
The release, which celebrates Malcolm Arnold’s centenary, contrasts works very different in mood and style. One is light and merry, the other comes from the time of one of the composer’s most acute crises. This highlights the duality of Arnold’s personality, sometimes jocular and rumbustious, sometimes depressive and even suicidal: a complex man difficult to characterise with a few words.
The Grand Concerto Gastronomique for Eater, Waiter, Food and Large Orchestra Op.76 – to give the piece its full title – was written for one of Hoffnung’s festivals. Arnold composed several works for such occasions that often meant great fun. Some of the pieces were allotted opus numbers; that, to a certain point, may confirm their intrinsic musical value and the composer’s affection for them. Such was the case with A Grand Grand Overture Op.57 that contains some very fine music (and forget the floor polishers, rifles and the like) and with Carnival of Animals Op.72.
As the title implies, this piece is to be enacted in some way but the music may also be appreciated at face value. The prologue, a typical Arnold fanfare that will recur once or twice in the course of the piece, launches the proceedings. Waiter and Eater enter to the accompaniment of a little march. Oysters are served and the music turns into some seascape with “mock-heroic horn calls”. It rises to a climax after which the waiter performs a brief dance in Spanish style, using the oyster shells as castanets!
“Soup (Brown Windsor)” begins with a quiet restatement of the fanfare before turning into a thickly scored waltz. “Roast Beef” is built on an almost Elgarian stately march tune to be repeated ad lib. (John Gibbons and his orchestra repeat it three times only.) “Cheese” is another short movement opening again with the fanfare. When the Waiter uncovers the cheese, it explodes. “Peach Melba” is one of those clever but affectionate parodies that Arnold could write with a smile. The wordless vocalist sings Gounod’s Ave Maria to a harp accompaniment playing Bach’s first Prelude from Das wohltemperierte Klavier, Book 1; a solo vibraphone is thrown in for some celestial quality.
The last movement “Coffee, Brandy. Epilogue” starts with a solo oboe playing some exotic dance. Brandy is served ‘in an enormous balloon glass’. The Eater takes his leave. All seems to be well but not quite so, for the Waiter searches for his tip, finds there is none, kicks the table over and leaves. It may be fun to watch the whole thing enacted but Arnold’s music, really fine, stands on its own.
If I have spent quite a while on what some will regard as a fun piece, I did it to emphasize the enormous gap between this sunny music and the Symphony No.9 in D major Op.128, completed in 1986 after the composer had gone “through hell”, as he himself declared. The composition was fraught with difficulties of all sorts. The symphony should have followed hard on the heels of its predecessor – the Eighth Symphony from 1978 – but things did not take the expected direction. Arnold suffered a catastrophic breakdown following a suicide attempt. After a long period of recuperation, he felt able to resume composition but this was still not the end of the story. The symphony had to wait for its first performance, and that took place in 1992 in Studio 5 of BBC Manchester. The BBC Philharmonic was led by Sir Charles Grove, a long-standing champion of Arnold’s music and a personal friend.
Another factor explains the long gap between the completion of the work and its first performance: the score itself looks almost empty, and even Arnold’s publishers were unsure about the piece. The global structure of the Ninth Symphony is also rather unusual. Its four movements seem unbalanced. The long final Lento is as long as the first three movements put together. The writing is sparser than ever, constantly in two-part harmony, and the thematic material is deceptively simple.
The first movement Vivace is based on an “airy triple-time theme” that sounds simple but the basic key of D major remains ambiguous. The music does not really develop but a certain unity is attained by recurring fragments from the main theme. Their interplay leads (almost inevitably) to a last forceful restatement of the main theme. The second movement Allegretto is entirely based on one theme stated by a lonely bassoon at the outset. It will be repeated unvaried throughout the entire movement either alone or in groups, with or without countermelodies. The movement ends with a restatement of the theme played by a lonely bassoon. Timothy Bowers’s illuminating notes go into details on the lines along which the movement is built.
The third movement Giubiloso brings us back to Malcolm Arnold’s familiar sound world. It evokes the manner of the English Dances, and almost sounds as the unwritten ninth dance but that is again somewhat deceiving. Things are never as simple as that becuse Arnold’s music often carries darker undertones, even in his would-be lighter works. The movement ends with a short coda preparing for the long final Lento. The opening sighing fall of the main theme has a Mahlerian or Brucknerian ring that will not be easily dispelled. The music unfolds in two-part or three-part harmony, unrelieved by any ray of light. During the course of the movement, the music almost comes to a halt near breaking point although one may perceive a ghostly funereal march in slow motion. At one point, there is “a brief exchange between trumpet and horn” with a ‘last post’ connotation that again does not relieve the oppressive mood of the music eventually reaching a final luminous chord. Arnold once said that “without that chord, the surrender to nihilism and despair would be total”. He also described his Ninth Symphony as “an amalgam of all my knowledge of humanity”. This doubtless difficult work does not yield all its secrets and riches in one hearing. It needs and repays repeated hearings. Quoting the booklet notes again, “it is, despite its austerity, the work of a master craftsman who, throughout his life, wrote music that is far more than the sum of its parts”.
Any performance of Arnold’s Ninth Symphony stands or falls in the final Lento because the music is always on the verge of collapsing, never mind how adequately the tempi have been judged. I compared this reading with two I know, by Andrew Penny on Conifer and by Vernon Handley on Naxos (I have not heard Rumon Gamba on Chandos). Handley’s 23:48 and Penny’s 23:10 are much slower than 17:57 here. Slow tempi are difficult to sustain without letting the music fall apart but both Penny and Handley are quite successful. John Gibbons approaches the Symphony somewhat differently. He has conducted it on several occasions so he, too, may claim some familiarity with the idiom and the piece. He explained in his note that he “followed a pinch-of-salt approach to the metronome mark of the last movement, feeling the pulse as a tactus rather than a crotchet beat, which allows the music to flow inexorably towards the sublime D major resolution at the end of the work”. I find his approach most convincing and likely to appeal to those still unsure about the work (although other readings are well worth investigating).
The orchestra on this recording must have been new to this music but they perform these highly different works with assurance and commitment that surely would have pleased Malcolm Arnold. The illustrated notes, enriched with music examples, are a definite asset.
Hubert Culot
Previous review: Nick Barnard
