More evidence of the permissive society
My plea that audiences should be given permission to like unfamiliar music is being answered in unlikely places. One example is Sony's Sir Malcolm Arnold: The Complete Conifer Recordings. The centrepiece of this newly released 11 CD box, which retails for around the cost of a single full price CD, is Vernon Handley's cycle of the composer's nine symphonies. These are supplemented by myriad other delights including concertos, overtures and the familiar Scottish, English and Cornish Dances in their less familiar versions for brass band. All the recordings date from the late 1980s and 1990s, and they demonstrate why the sadly defunct Conifer was celebrated for its commitment to recorded sound quality.
In recent years Sir Malcolm, who is seen above, has suffered from insidious marginalisation, whereby his symphonic masterworks are resolutely ignored, but his occasional pieces are programmed. Which means that a new generation of concertgoers is growing up perceiving him as a composer of amuse-bouches. To give an example, Sir Malcolm's A Grand, Grand Overture was played at the 2009 Last Night of the Proms, and his English Dances were given an outing in a 2013 English Light Music Prom. But there have only ever been five performances of his symphonies at the Proms, the last in 1994. This despite growing recognition of the worth of Sir Malcolm's symphonic output and its undoubted appeal to audiences steeped in Mahler and Shostakovich. None other than Norman Lebrecht has described him as "the major British symphonist" and Norman wrote this in The Companion to 20th-Century Music (Simon & Schuster, 1992):
A sniffy British establishement, suspicious of a former London Philharmonic player who presumed to write symphonies, crossed him off its agenda... he wrote music that orchestral musicians liked to play, and this counted against him with the intellectuals and managers.It takes something truly remarkable to make me agree with Norman Lebrecht. The music of Sir Malcolm Arnold is truly remarkable, and this new overview of his music from Sony offers a unique opportunity to experience its addictive power. So once again I advise, buy or live forever in darkness.
Header photo via BBC. No review samples used in this post. Any copyrighted material is included as "fair use" for critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Also on Facebook and Twitter.
Comments
That is a description I wish I had come up with.
https://twitter.com/sbrackenborough/status/760861022584467456
This can also be said for a number of English symphonists who have been ignored in recent years, among them David Matthews, George Lloyd, Benjamin Frankel and others who have, shall we say, not composed works to satisfy the Oliver Knussen crowd of British music. Young British conductors simply look the other way, and most likely have classified these composers as "second-tier" composers who have very little to offer, leaving their music open to conductors such as myself who want to perform them, but either have orchestras that may not be able to aptly execute these compositions, or simply don't have an orchestra they can call home.
Such snobbery and class-ism seems to be welcome in many quarters. I know I have a friend of mine who is a musicologist where we don't share the same viewpoint on new music, though I feel I am more open to choices than he is, but...it is what it is.
Arnold, Frankel and Lloyd, for my money, are kindred souls in that they were romantics in a hostile atmosphere (Post-serialist fascism was the rage - you either composed in that idiom or were prepared to be damned), yet managed to find a way to integrate some aspects of contemporary language in their works without sacrificing their integrity (Frankel's symphonies are no less thorny than those of Humphrey Searle - another neglected figure in British music that should be programmed more often - but they tend to have a tad more melodic infusion than Searle's searing orchestral canvasses).
One hopes that the current trend of conductors will "re-discover" Arnold and the other composers I mentioned and go out of their way to persuade orchestra administrators that their work is significantly relevant to today's music scene as much as it was when the works were first composed. But I don't see Knussen, or any of the young turks of the podium, championing any of these composers any time soon.
It's worth remembering that the marginaliser-in-chief of the likes of Arnold – William Glock – did, I suppose under pressure from somebody, commission Arnold's 4th symphony (which was a musical reaction to the 1958 Notting Hill race riots).
If being a great composer means having a sound like nobody else's, Arnold qualifies. Often the uniqueness is the string sound. With Arnold, it's the sound of his brass.
The story of Arnold's rescue by Anthony Day (for which see Tony Palmer's film) is more than just true: it belongs in the realm of English legend, like the story of Delius's rescue by Eric Fenby.
Constant Lambert, Alan Rawsthorne, Malcolm Arnold: three great drinkers of 20th c English music.
Which of Arnold's post-rescue works were the equals of his earlier ones? The Irish Dances are as good as the earlier ones. Could he have sketched them in Ireland before his breakdown? The jury seems to be out on the 9th sym. (I haven't heard it.)
The soundtrack for the 1957 movie Island in the Sun has just been uploaded by James Stuart (in occasionally wobbly archival sound, but most of it is OK) and is sheer pleasure:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PI-8U78MYlU