ID: GMCD7216 (EAN: 795754721621) |
1 CD |
DDD Released in: 2001
- LABEL:
- Guild GmbH
- Collection:
- World Premiere Recording
- Composers:
- ARNOLD, Sir Malcolm
-
Interprets:
- BAILEY, Robert (cello) | BICKEL, Maya (violin) | DAVIS, Miranda (viola) | FINDON, Andy (flute) | LEE, Dave (horn) | LEWIS, Oliver (violin) | Mc NAUGHTON, Gavin (bassoon / bassoon)
- Ensembles:
- The Ceruti Ensemble of London
- Other info:
Recorded: St Silas, Chalk Farm, London - 13-15 November 2000
Oliver Lewis is playing a J B Guadagnini violin of 1760, generously on loan by Oliver Jacques, Switzerland
Apart from his early professional life as a trumpet player - for some years, he was principal trumpet in the London Philharmonic - Sir Malcolm Arnold has made his living entirely from composing. Very few composers of his generation (he was born in 1921 in Northampton) have been able to do this, which alone indicates that his music has had wide and lasting appeal. Arnold's art is instantly recognisable - just a few bars are needed before his creative personality becomes apparent - and his musical language appears virtually fully formed from the beginning.
A composer's language is one thing; more importantly is what it conveys. Arnold is unafraid to embrace elements that more ostensibly 'serious' composers would avoid - elements including more genuinely popular gestures - alongside an orchestral mastery (his playing experience enlightening the practicalities of instrumentation) and an immediacy of thought which might not always embrace traditional symphonic development, but is so conceptually original to make us apply different analytical approaches to Arnold's music: considering the music as sequential events rather than as fitting a pre-existing structure.
String Quartet no 1 Opus 23 (1949)
I Allegro commodo II Vivace III Andante; Lento; Tempo primo IV Allegro con spirito
Arnold's two string quartets form a fascinating contrast. The first, as can be seen, comes from the first period in Arnold's work, whereas the second was written more than thirty years later. Both quartets are in four movements, and the First (premiered by the New London String Quartet in a BBC Third Programme concert in November, 1950) opens with a chromatically descending idea before a more recognisably 'first-subject' follows; this newer, expanded theme forms the basis for almost all of the first movement - troubled in emotion, questioning in character, but at all times sustained by a genuine sense of forward momentum, despite remarkable textural combinations (including glissandos, pizzicati fragmentation and repeated notes). The movement's ending is sudden. The Vivace takes the repeated notes and turns
them into new textural ambiances, occasionally thematic, fantastic, and exhibiting an extraordinarily pervasive nervousness that somehow avoids neuroticism. Once more, the ending is sudden.
In the slow movement, the very opening material of the work is now transformed "into something rich and strange". Here, in the naturally deliberate tempo, the mood is not at all one of repose, retaining the underlying nervousness which the music has been unable to shrug off. Arnold now tackles these inherent problems head-on: "accompanied" solos stretch the material, akin at times to an English Shostakovich, though with a greater feeling for timbral colouration. The finale is not an emergence into bright sunlight: the serious nature of the work continus, even if the somewhat overtly English material here provides more recognisable points of reference. The coda turns the music again inward, upon itself, ending this extraordinary work in an almost secretive manner.
String Quartet no 2 Opus 118 (1975)
I Allegro II Maestoso con molto rubato; Allegro vivace III Andante IV Allegretto; Vivace; Lento
Arnold's Quartet no 2 was completed in Dublin on August 12 1975 and is dedicated to Hugh Maguire, leader of the Allegri String Quartet, who gave the first performance in Dublin Castle in June 1976. The British premiere, by the same ensemble, occured three days later at Snape Maltings, as part of the Aldeburgh Festival.
Although the Second Quartet is a different proposition to the First, its opening bars seem to refract, at vast distance, the material that began the earlier work. If this is so, which analysis merely suggests, we are in a new world. The thought is more elliptical, if scarcely less direct, and if the textural character is recognisably that of the same artist, it seems to loom at us, almost frighteningly angry in mood. This is not, by any means, the genial Arnold of a hundred 'feel-good' films; here is revealed a troubled soul - yet, just when we think we have identified this character, a sudden new theme, gentle if not wholly genial, cuts across our perception and brings the movement to a still troubled, unresolved, end.
This irresolution is brought to its furthest point in the next movement. First violin, unaccompanied, intones an extraordinary solo, divorced from all we have thus heard and coalescing into a Celtic dance which is suddenly attacked (no other word will do) by the other players. The emotion is ratched up further, as this amazingly challenging phantasmagoria unfolds before us.
The essential chromaticism of the succeeding slow movement borders on, and occasionally embraces, serial writing within a ternary structure, before the movement's organic simplicity reveals, within the extended coda, elements of tonal bases. Nor is this musically illogical, for the nature of the material itself enables it to be thus treated. In this way is Shostakovich further invoked.
The finale brings a new character on first violin over a soft, faster accompaniment. The violin theme, faintly familiar, receives full symphonic treatment which demands close attention from the listener. Eventually, the mood progressively lightens from the central Vivace, as the Quartet, gradually divested of its troubles, moves towards a warmly embracing, yet underlyingly passionate, coda.
Quintet for flute, violin, viola, horn and bassoon Opus 7 (1944, rev 1960)
I Allegro con brio; II Andante con moto; III Allegretto con molto espressivo
The attention the Phantasy received (together with Arnold's valuation of its worth), doubtless spurred him to tackle more chamber music. His earliest acknowledged output contains several chamber pieces - many with wind instruments - and this Quintet is the biggest of these. It was first given by members of the LPO at a National Gallery concert in London in December, 1944; fifteen years later, the score was revised for a broadcast on the BBC Third Programme - a Thursday Invitation Concert in March, 1960.
The first movement is deceptively discursive, the more so as one considers the unusual combination of instruments: change the horn and bassoon to cello and double bass (perfectly possible, given the nature of the writing), and we have a quintet for flute and strings - but the musical argument has no protagonist as such; it is conveyed with complete communality. The argument, as it progresses (with one main theme variously stated several times by each of the instruments, contrasted with fragmentary comment derived from aspects of the theme itself) is enhanced by the unusual colouration of the quintet's instrumentation. The mood is urbane and relaxed, in contrast to that of the second movement, which brings an underlying nervousness to the surface. In this movement, the material is almost wholly concerned with adjacent semitones and the disbolus in musica interval of an augmented fourth; by this simple stratagem, Arnold has turned convention on its head - the first movement was as surprisingly relaxed as the (traditionally relaxed) slow movement is (surprisingly) uneasy. The finale is also unusual; nodding in the direction of sonata rondo, the tempo is does not immediately 'ease' the tension - the Allegretto tends to unify aspects of the preceding movements; no small feat, given the situation. Finally, Arnold's inherent optimism wins the day - but the victory is not wholly unresolved.
Phantasy for String Quartet: 'Vita Abundans' (1941)
Andante con moto; Andante; Presto; Andante con moto; Andante; Molto presto
Early in the 20th-century the English philanthropist W.W. Cobbett, specialising in the promotion of chamber music, founded competitions for British composers. He stipulated that the submitted works be in one movement, and that composers may "write what they like - in any shape - as long as it was a shape". He also required that 'Phantasy' formed part of the title, evoking the English string 'Fantasias' of Tudor and Jacobean times.
Cobbett died in 1937, in his 90th year. His competitions continued, and in 1941, the 19-year-old Malcolm Arnold entered his first ever chamber-music composition, for string quartet. The piece, completed in London on June 17, was subtitled 'Vita Abundans' (Abundant Life); it gained second prize. The first prize-winner was Ruth Gipps, who - on seeing Arnold's score - declared that he should have won.
The Phantasy has six continuous sections and appears not to have been performed publicly at the time. Eighteen months later, Arnold reworked the Presto section as the second movement of his opus 2 Wind Quintet. According to Alan Poulton, other parts of the Phantasy were to be incorporated into a Symphony - which did not materialise (distinct from the First Symphony proper, which appeared in 1949). Although his Phantasy did not win the Cobbett Prize on that occasion, Arnold clearly thought highly of the music, and, hearing it today, we may understand why. This significant contribution to the British quartet repertoire has remained unknown for 60 years.
A remarkable aspect is Arnold's sympathy with, and control of, the textural possibilities of the medium, producing a work of considerable fascination. The Phantasy is dominated, melodically, by the opening theme (over an important developing texture) which mutates into a kind of second subject. The working of these themes and their 'satellite' ideas is compelling, and the manner whereby the composition's essential unity is finally revealed is quite masterly. Robert Matthew-Walker (c) 2001
