Overtures (Includes 'A Grand Grand Festival Overture')

Recording of the Month (MusicWeb April 2005)

"Hugely entertaining music conducted with incisiveness and flair. A pretty unmissable disc. I urgently recommend it."
(MusicWeb)

Chandos is well known for its recordings of Sir Malcolm Arnold's music - indeed, these are generally acknowledged by most to rank amongst the finest available - and its discs of Arnold's film music are some of its biggest sellers. This unique anthology of concert overtures should prove as popular, for the music is similarly illustrative and entertaining. Some of these works are rare in the catalogue and one of them has never before been recorded. They demonstrates Arnold's versatility, for they cover a broad range of musical moods - the comic Tam o' Shanter, the pastoral A Sussex Overture, and the hilariously inventive A Grand Grand Festival Overture, a piece which was enormous fun to record, for the orchestral line-up includes vacuum cleaners and a floor polisher, played, on this recording, by the management of the BBC
Philharmonic!