Symphonies Nos 7 & 8

"A worthy 80th birthday tribute to Sir Malcolm Arnold from one of a new generation of conductors championing his symphonic music."
Editor's Choice. Gramophone Magazine Sept 2001

"I like Penny's reading on Naxos better than Gamba's. Penny's Irish National is more reverent in the lengthy finale, and therefore more profound. The Naxos seems perfectly balanced. Penny's lighter disposition in the earlier movements better demonstrates the contrasting moods, and his orchestra's commitment to articulation is finally more exciting. In the 12-min oboe concerto, Jennifer Galloway is pure and expressive. It's a fleeting, spirited composition, and I enjoyed it."
--Review by Haldeman, American Record Guide, January/February 2002

"This disc completes Naxos' first-class survey of the complete symphonies of Malcolm Arnold, a collection that constitutes a prime recommendation in this repertoire, irrespective of price. Chandos' own cycle also concludes shortly (Fall 2001), with the last three symphonies and the Oboe Concerto released in a two-disc set directed not by Richard Hickox, as were Symphonies 1-6, but by Rumon Gamba. It's going to have to be pretty special to beat these performances, recorded under the composer's supervision.

It's always interesting to hear a second take on music relatively new to disc. Vernon Handley conducted the CD premieres of both symphonies for Conifer only a few years ago, and while the differences between the two versions aren't all that significant, a few details tip the balance in favor of the newcomer. These are both bitter, aggressive works, despite the fact that they nominally end in "happy" major keys. Arnold's Mahlerian sense of irony reveals itself in his employment of folk and jazz materials, often as brief islands of nostalgia or simplicity in a tormented orchestral context. It's clear now, on hearing Andrew Penny's performance of the finale of the Eighth Symphony, that Handley simply takes the music too quickly to allow its thematic substance proper articulation, particularly from the brass. Penny's slightly more expansive opening of Symphony No. 7 also allows the music to breathe with no loss of excitement, a critical point in considering the emotionally desperate second subject. But these are by no means "slow" performances; they're just more vividly inflected, more highly contrasted, and thus a bit richer, emotionally speaking, than Handley's.

Naxos also offers a better-balanced recording. Conifer spotlights the brass, horns especially, to the exclusion of all else (for all that they play very brilliantly). At climaxes (and this music has a lot of those), the recording loses contrapuntal clarity and makes Arnold's scoring sound more like band music than it needs to. Granted, the Royal Philharmonic probably is the finer orchestra section by section, but Penny's Irish players offer a better picture of the music, thanks to a more sensitive and coherent sense of ensemble. In sum, this disc caps an important and very impressive musical achievement for Penny, his orchestra, and Naxos, and represents a fine tribute to a major 20th century symphonist."
10/10 for Artistic & Sound quality
Classics Today

"Contemporary English composer Sir Malcolm Arnold has written a multitude of film scores, and as a result he is often thought of as a light-music composer. But his nine symphonies and many overtures and marches show us a musician who can move from the serene to the rollicking and from the sublime to the ridiculous in grand form. Arnold is a kind of throwback to another era, a Romanticist in the Modern Age, a man whose magic can be serious but never self-righteous. That said, the two symphonies recorded here represent Arnold's more earnest and more darkly creative side...In all, [the recording] is a pleasant and in some ways stimulating musical coupling, framed in clean, modern digital sound, and costing a pittance. Interesting stuff."
- John Puccio, Sensible Sound April/May 2002

"Arnold is a kind of a throwback to another era, a Romanticist in the Modern Age, a man whose music can be serious but never self-righteous. That said, the two symphonies recorded here represent Arnold's more earnest and more darkly creative side... Andrew Penny and his Irish players perform both works in precise terms, leaning heavily to clarification rather than overt dramatics. Naxos provides a clear, true sound for the proceedings. In all, it's a pleasant and in some ways stimulating musical coupling, framed in clean, modern digital sound, and costing a pittance."
- John Puccio Sensible Sound April/May 2002

"For the Seventh and Eighth Symphonies Penny and the Irish orchestra are superb. They have played well in Arnold¡¦s other symphonies, but here they equal the best work of the major orchestras of England in their recordings of Arnold symphonies, dating back to the 1950s... Naxos offers proportionally more description and analysis of the music... The Naxos Seventh and Eighth are exceptionally fine."
- Robert McColley, Fanfare, January/February 2002

"I like Penny's reading on Naxos better than Gamba's. Penny's Irish National is more reverent in the lengthy finale, and therefore more profound. The Naxos seems perfectly balanced. Penny's lighter disposition in the earlier movements better demonstrates the contrasting moods, and his orchestra's commitment to articulation is finally more exciting. In the 12-min oboe concerto, Jennifer Galloway is pure and expressive. It's a fleeting, spirited composition, and I enjoyed it."
- Haldeman American Record Guide January/February 2002

Malcolm Arnold was born in 1921 in Northampton, where his father was a well-to-do shoe manufacturer. There was music in the family, both from his father and from his mother, a descendant of a former Master of the Chapel Royal. Instead of the usual period at a public school, he was educated privately at home. As a twelve-year-old he found a new interest in the trumpet and in jazz after hearing Louis Armstrong, and three years later he was able to study the instrument in London under Ernest Hall, subsequently winning a scholarship to the Royal College of Music, where his composition teacher was Gordon Jacob. Two years later he left the College to join the London Philharmonic Orchestra as second trumpet. Meanwhile he had won a composition prize for a one-movement string quartet. It was as an orchestral player that he was able to explore the wider orchestral repertoire, in particular the symphonies of Mahler.

Early in the 1939-45 war Arnold was a conscientious objector, in common with a number of other leading musicians. He was allowed to continue his work as an orchestral player, taking the position of first trumpet in the London Philharmonic in 1943. In the same year, however, he volunteered for military service, but was discharged after shooting himself in the foot, playing, thereafter, second trumpet to his teacher Ernest Hall in the BBC Symphony Orchestra and then rejoining the London Philharmonic, where he served as principal trumpet until 1948. During these years he had continued to work as a composer, with a series of successful orchestral compositions, as well as a variety of chamber music.

Since 1948 Malcolm Arnold has earned his living as a composer. In the 1960s he settled in Cornwall, where he became closely involved with the musical activities of the county. In 1972 he moved to Dublin, his home for the next five years, and then, in 1977, to Norfolk. Over the years his work has been much in demand for film scores, of which he has written some eighty. He has written concertos for an amazing variety of instruments, nine numbered symphonies, sinfoniettas, concert overtures and other orchestral works. His chamber music is equally varied and there is a set of works for solo wind and other instruments, aptly meeting the demands of competitive as of solo recital performance.

In style Malcolm Arnold has a command of popular idiom and this may have suggested to some an unfavourable identification with the world of light music. He is, in fact, a composer of considerable stature, technically assured, fluent and prolific, providing music that gives pleasure, but also music that may have a more sombre side, work that may be lyrical and tuneful, or even astringent and harsh in its revelations. Donald Mitchell has compared Arnold, illuminatingly, with Dickens, both of them great entertainers but both well aware of the human predicament, unsettlingly revealed, as he points out, in the remarkable series of symphonies.