(++++) MASTERY MISCONSTRUED

Sir Malcolm Arnold: Symphonies Nos. 1-9 (complete); English Dances, Sets 1 and 2; Four Scottish Dances; Four Cornish Dances; Four Irish Dances; Four Welsh Dances. National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland and Queensland Symphony Orchestra conducted by Andrew Penny. Naxos. $42.99 (6 CDs).

     In the mid-1950s, Malcolm Arnold – not yet Sir Malcolm – wrote a wonderfully parodistic piece called A Grand Grand Overture for the Hoffnung Music Festival, organized and named for music-focused cartoonist and raconteur Gerard Hoffnung (1925-1959). Arnold’s work included three vacuum cleaners and a floor polisher and was dedicated to U.S. President Hoover (a “hoover” being the common British term for a vacuum cleaner). Although this piece was not Arnold’s first foray into lighter classical music, it is in some ways emblematic of the composer’s reputation, which relies heavily on film scores, dances, and tuneful amusements of many sorts – often created with considerable wit and offbeat tributes to other music (A Grand Grand Overture incorporates firearms, along the lines of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture).

     Those who see a more serious side of Arnold tend to see it in his personal life more than in his music: he was under the care of the British Court of Protection from 1979 to 1986, had made two suicide attempts, had been treated for alcoholism and depression, and was known to be highly promiscuous. But Arnold, born in 1921, returned to public and compositional life in 1986 and lived an additional 20 years – during which his music, which had fallen into disfavor, garnered renewed interest.

     It turned out, for those willing to look and listen, that Arnold was not only capable of hummable tonal short pieces but also had considerable skill as a symphonist, and indeed, his nine symphonies are as worthy a legacy in their way as are the nine of Ralph Vaughan Williams. In fact, Arnold’s nine end with a work that, like the ninth symphonies of Bruckner and Mahler, stands as a capstone-cum-new-direction for the composer – although certainly not a piece destined for the popularity of the ninth symphonies of Beethoven and Dvořák.

     Tracing Arnold’s symphonic development turns out to be a fascinating and very worthwhile journey, one handled with considerable skill by Andrew Penny and the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland in recordings made from 1995 to 2000 and attended by the composer himself. Naxos’ splendid six-CD re-release of these recordings of Arnold’s symphonies is revelatory of the music and the man who made it, again and again. The chronologically sequential presentation makes it abundantly clear where Arnold began as a symphonist and where he went with the form between his first symphony (1949) and his last (1986). These are not generally lengthy or grandiose works: five are in three movements, the rest in four, and while the final symphony lasts more than 45 minutes, none of the others lasts as long as 40.

     Penny is remarkably sensitive to the structure and nuances of all the symphonies, and it is hard to imagine a more-compelling version of this cycle. The first symphony, in three movements, is classically proportioned and establishes the sort of intense finale that Arnold favored in most of these works. The second (1953), in four movements, features a melancholic slow movement with a prominent bassoon theme. The third (1957), in three movements, contains echoes of Sibelius (with whose symphonies Arnold’s have some similarities); the fourth (1960), in four movements, uses West Indian and African rhythms and instruments to fine effect. The fifth symphony (1951), another four-movement piece, skillfully uses a carillon and contains tributes to several of Arnold’s friends and colleagues (shades of Elgar!); it also has a distinctly Mahlerian slow movement. The sixth, seventh and eighth symphonies all revert to three-movement form. The sixth (1967) incorporates more jazz and popular influences than Arnold previously employed; the seventh (1973) is emotionally intense and at times genuinely strange, as in a ragtime march that suddenly appears in the very extended first movement; the eighth (1979) is by turns discordant, martial, severe and perky.

     None of these symphonies leads in a straight-line fashion to Arnold’s Symphony No. 9. This expansive four-movement creation is more strongly weighted to the finale than any of Arnold’s other symphonies: the last movement is almost as long as the first three together, in the manner of Mendelssohn’s Lobgesang. Arnold’s last symphony sounds odd, certainly by comparison with his earlier ones, being filled with repetition (not quite in minimalist style), a sense of themes presented without development, and a strong contrast between the pastoral second movement and the noisy, brass-focused third. The finale is marked Lento and is as different from Arnold’s usual symphonic conclusions as it can be: bleak, sad to the point of being funereal, despairing until its very last bars, it is a difficult movement to hear and understand, although it connects as viscerally to a listener’s emotions as does the finale of Mahler’s Ninth, which Arnold acknowledges as an influence. Penny and Arnold actually discuss this work in a 10-minute interview appended to the performance of the symphony, and their discussion sheds considerable light on the darkness of this music, without ever fully elucidating it.

      With or without the interview, Arnold’s Ninth is a tough nut to crack and a clear indication that the view of Arnold as primarily a film-and-light-music composer is seriously misguided, if not altogether wrong. The fact that Arnold did produce a great deal of bouncy, pleasant, effective music is worth remembering, and Penny ensures that listeners are aware of this aspect of the composer as well as his serious, symphonic side: the sixth disc in this boxed set includes all six sets of Arnold’s dances, with Penny here leading the Queensland Symphony Orchestra in performances that, like those of the symphonies, were attended by the composer himself. Like the symphonies, the dances are presented chronologically, the two English sets from 1950 and 1951 being followed by the Scottish from 1957, Cornish from 1966, Irish from 1986, and Welsh from 1988. The consistent verve and high spirits of the dance music, the folklike elements and mild melancholy, contrast strongly with the feelings and effects in Arnold’s symphonies, with the result that the totality of this re-release provides as complete a picture of Arnold as a multifaceted composer as listeners are ever likely to encounter – a most welcome chance to acknowledge a more in-depth view of Arnold than has often been held in the past.