sir Malcolm Arnold

Started by Thom, April 12, 2007, 10:28:13 AM

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Mirror Image

Not a fan of Palmer's films, but for those that want to see it, his Arnold documentary has been uploaded via YouTube in its entirety:

https://www.youtube.com/v/uZsuYbn8DaE

Mirror Image

I've been seriously enjoying Arnold's overtures as of late --- both the Arnold conducted recording on Reference Recordings and Gamba's recording on Chandos. These are such fun works and sometimes it's great to 'let your hair down' so to speak, which Walton's Portsmouth Point Overture also has done for me when I listened to it several nights ago. What I like about Arnold and Walton especially is their ability to not take everything so seriously and I find that whole English 'stiff upper lip' attitude doesn't apply to these composers, but I think it speaks of their particular generation. The lip started loosening with Elgar, Delius, Holst and then Vaughan Williams and the generations after these composers.

Maestro267

Let's hope this centenary year brings Arnold to a bit more prominence, certainly for his serious works.

Mirror Image

Quote from: Maestro267 on January 01, 2021, 03:03:28 AM
Let's hope this centenary year brings Arnold to a bit more prominence, certainly for his serious works.

I certainly hope so, but I doubt it. I think if anything what we'll see is a rehashing of performances that any Arnold fan already owns. Let's hope that Chandos and Naxos has something up their sleeves.

vandermolen

Quote from: Maestro267 on January 01, 2021, 03:03:28 AM
Let's hope this centenary year brings Arnold to a bit more prominence, certainly for his serious works.
+1
"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm" (Churchill).

'The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good' (Stanley Kubrick).

springrite

I have had about a dozen Arnold CDs for more than two decades. I don't really know why I have so many, for I hardly ever listen to them and the have left little or no impression and I had no inclination to go back to them, until...

Last weeks I re-listened to most of them. Some of the works are so powerful suddenly! I especially like symphonies 5 and 7. The dances (Scottish, English...) and The Return of Odysseus are wonderful works as well!

I am repeating the listening this week.
Do what I must do, and let what must happen happen.

vandermolen

Quote from: springrite on January 25, 2021, 06:18:05 PM
I have had about a dozen Arnold CDs for more than two decades. I don't really know why I have so many, for I hardly ever listen to them and the have left little or no impression and I had no inclination to go back to them, until...

Last weeks I re-listened to most of them. Some of the works are so powerful suddenly! I especially like symphonies 5 and 7. The dances (Scottish, English...) and The Return of Odysseus are wonderful works as well!

I am repeating the listening this week.
Interesting. I prefer the odd numbered symphonies + No.6
"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm" (Churchill).

'The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good' (Stanley Kubrick).

relm1

Quote from: springrite on January 25, 2021, 06:18:05 PM
I have had about a dozen Arnold CDs for more than two decades. I don't really know why I have so many, for I hardly ever listen to them and the have left little or no impression and I had no inclination to go back to them, until...

Last weeks I re-listened to most of them. Some of the works are so powerful suddenly! I especially like symphonies 5 and 7. The dances (Scottish, English...) and The Return of Odysseus are wonderful works as well!

I am repeating the listening this week.

Which conductors do you have because there is a huge range in interpretation making them feel like completely different works depending on who you listen to.  This sort of could be summed up as those interpretations from everyone and those conducted by Arnold himself which are quite different.  For me, Arnold is the conductor to go with.  If you can't find one (such as I don't think he recorded No. 9), then any other alternative will be satisfactory but the Arnold ones are revolutionary making you understand the music in a different way.

springrite

Quote from: relm1 on January 26, 2021, 06:28:10 AM
Which conductors do you have because there is a huge range in interpretation making them feel like completely different works depending on who you listen to.  This sort of could be summed up as those interpretations from everyone and those conducted by Arnold himself which are quite different.  For me, Arnold is the conductor to go with.  If you can't find one (such as I don't think he recorded No. 9), then any other alternative will be satisfactory but the Arnold ones are revolutionary making you understand the music in a different way.
I do have Arnold with #3 and the Scottish dances, Penny with #5 and Handley with #7. (I think I used to have Hiddox with #5 and #6 before, until it became one of the many that was borrowed but not returned)
Do what I must do, and let what must happen happen.

vandermolen

Quote from: springrite on January 27, 2021, 08:43:13 AM
I do have Arnold with #3 and the Scottish dances, Penny with #5 and Handley with #7. (I think I used to have Hiddox with #5 and #6 before, until it became one of the many that was borrowed but not returned)

I agree with relm 1 especially in relation to Arnold's own recording of Symphony No.1 which is much slower than any other recording but which IMO has much more gravitas and is much more powerful and moving.
"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm" (Churchill).

'The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good' (Stanley Kubrick).

Mirror Image

Quote from: springrite on January 27, 2021, 08:43:13 AM
I do have Arnold with #3 and the Scottish dances, Penny with #5 and Handley with #7. (I think I used to have Hickox with #5 and #6 before, until it became one of the many that was borrowed but not returned)

Yikes! This has only happened to me one time (thankfully, not with a classical recording) and I swore that after this incident I would never lend out anything from collection. I'm more than happy to burn someone a copy of a recording, however.

André

Quote from: relm1 on January 26, 2021, 06:28:10 AM
Which conductors do you have because there is a huge range in interpretation making them feel like completely different works depending on who you listen to.  This sort of could be summed up as those interpretations from everyone and those conducted by Arnold himself which are quite different.  For me, Arnold is the conductor to go with.  If you can't find one (such as I don't think he recorded No. 9), then any other alternative will be satisfactory but the Arnold ones are revolutionary making you understand the music in a different way.

+ 1

Arnold's performances of symphonies 4 (Lyrita), 7 (concert recording available on YT) and some Overtures (on Reference) make all others sound like rushed dry runs. His conducting style was weighty and strongly accented.

Albion

#492
In 2001 Rumon Gamba conducted the BBC Philharmonic in a splendid live Arnold symphony cycle broadcast on BBC Radio 3. Here, to complement his interpretations of numbers 7-9 issued on Chandos, are the first six:

https://www.mediafire.com/folder/v9kzlcq7aagcl/Arnold+-+Symphonies+1-6+(Gamba,+2001)

:)
A piece is worth your attention, and is itself for you praiseworthy, if it makes you feel you have not wasted your time over it. (SG, 1922)

Roasted Swan

Quote from: Albion on January 27, 2021, 03:25:42 PM
In 2001 Rumon Gamba conducted the BBC Philharmonic in a splendid live Arnold symphony cycle broadcast on BBC Radio 3. Here, to complement his interpretations of numbers 7-9 issued on Chandos, are the first six:

https://www.mediafire.com/folder/v9kzlcq7aagcl/Arnold+-+Symphonies+1-6+(Gamba,+2001)

:)

More treasures Albion - thankyou!

vandermolen

#494
I was delighted to find, on a shopping expedition to Waitrose, that the new BBC Music Magazine (April) includes a feature on Malcolm Arnold and that the cover disc features performances of symphonies 2 and 4. I'm currently listening to Symphony No.2 (BBC Concert Orchestra/Barry Wordsworth) which sounds like a most impressive performance, with a very deeply felt and slower-than-usual slow movement. To me it sounds like a much deeper work than it does, for example, in the Groves performance, good as it is. Recordings from the Arnold Festival in Northampton in 2018 and 2019:
"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm" (Churchill).

'The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good' (Stanley Kubrick).

vers la flamme

Not the first I've heard this "English Shostakovich" business, but personally I don't agree with that assessment. If anything, I do hear some similarities between Arnold and another Russian composer: Sergei Prokofiev. But Arnold is quite the original voice.

Symphonic Addict

Quote from: vers la flamme on March 21, 2021, 12:55:19 PM
Not the first I've heard this "English Shostakovich" business, but personally I don't agree with that assessment. If anything, I do hear some similarities between Arnold and another Russian composer: Sergei Prokofiev. But Arnold is quite the original voice.

I guess some could associate them because of the irony and rawness both [Shostakovich and Arnold] stamped on their works, but they handled those features in very personal and distinctive ways each other.
Part of the tragedy of the Palestinians is that they have essentially no international support for a good reason: they've no wealth, they've no power, so they've no rights.

Noam Chomsky

relm1

#497
The comparison is obvious.  It's not talking about musical style.  It's the merger of populism and pathos.  Sarcasm, wit, and drama tinged with pessimism.  They share these attributes fully in common.  Their difference is Mahler.  The epic and existential transformation. Elgar had loads of German and Slavic influences as did Shostakovich which I hear none of this in Arnold.  In Arnold's No. 9, I hear more Russian (Tchaikovsky Pathetique) than Bohemian/Viennese Mahler 9.

Archaic Torso of Apollo

Quote from: vers la flamme on March 21, 2021, 12:55:19 PM
Not the first I've heard this "English Shostakovich" business, but personally I don't agree with that assessment.

I think the affinities are obvious, but with a catch: Arnold is influenced mostly by the lighter, more eccentric DSCH symphonies (1, 6, 9, 15).
formerly VELIMIR (before that, Spitvalve)

"Who knows not strict counterpoint, lives and dies an ignoramus" - CPE Bach

vandermolen

#499
Quote from: Archaic Torso of Apollo on March 21, 2021, 06:38:59 PM
I think the affinities are obvious, but with a catch: Arnold is influenced mostly by the lighter, more eccentric DSCH symphonies (1, 6, 9, 15).

An interesting point although maybe Arnold's 'Peterloo Overture' (1967)  owes something to the massacre scene in Shostakovich's 11th Symphony 'The Year 1905' composed ten years earlier in 1957.
"Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm" (Churchill).

'The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good' (Stanley Kubrick).