Arnold: Symphony 9 & Symphony for Brass

 

Well, if Malcolm Arnold's symphonies seemed to be headed in craggier and more difficult directions, his last work in the genre, Symphony no. 9, takes a left turn away from that destination.

If anything, Arnold sounds like he is blowing all of the cobwebs away and reducing the music elements to their most basic and barest forms.

The first movement almost seems like the composer is back to his quirky earlier voice, with bright, rhythmic profiles and orchestrations. Some of the dissonances are more jarring, yet I feel a lightness and a smirk regardless.

The beautiful, yet plaintive second movement lets on to Sir Malcolm's new musical direction. Two-part harmonies are par for the course, often pairing two instruments or two instrumental sections together. The tune is rather lovely, if not lying on the forlorn side of the emotional spectrum, where Arnold just circles round and round, simply passing the tune against one harmonic line across the ensemble. After the last few symphonies, the sound here is a great surprise and, might I add, quite effective. I daresay, at 10 minutes, this rehashing of the same material might have gotten old, but this is such a new, inventive voice from Arnold, one can hardly complain.

While the third movement sounds of a mad galop, with plenty of swirling strings and brass exhortations, there are again moments where two instruments or two sections play off one another in a duet fashion. I love Arnold's use of trumpet here, as well as in the previous movement, a welcome timbre in this music. As with the rest of his Scherzos, they don't last long enough for my tastes.

The 20+ minute final movement returns to his ideas in the second movement, with lots of two-part settings. In the case of this fourth movement, Arnold never lets the music fully settle harmonically and the dolorous, troubled harmonic nature amidst a certain endlessness seems to be a final farewell, one no one actually wants to say, both from Arnold to the symphony and the listener to the music. Only at the final moment does a sense of peace and contentment finally arrive.

What a sendoff for Malcolm Arnold's last symphony! Sure it leaves questions about where his music could have headed from here, but if the composer led a tough and troubled life, this work leaves me with perhaps the most positive finality I could have asked from such a man. It makes me hope that he found some measure of catharsis through its composition. Certainly, it does me after having journeyed with Arnold through his symphonies.

Vernon Handley's bright, crystal-edged sonic profile might not be the best to capture the ruminative qualities of this last symphony, but the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra convinces me well enough.

In the Decca Malcolm Arnold Symphony Edition, the box set includes both the composer's early Symphony for Strings, which I covered with Arnold's Symphonies 1 & 2, plus his late Symphony for Brass, attached to the Ninth Symphony.

I really like this work too, here played by the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble, originally released on Argo in 1979. If I thought the first movement of Sir Malcolm's Symphony no. 9 might have been a hearkening back to a perkier, earlier style, the Symphony for Brass Instruments sees that idea throughout the entire work. That playful rhythmic style inhabits so much of this four-movement piece, and does so successfully with fewer resources.

The instrumentation is written for two larger groups, four trumpets and four trombones, aside a single French Horn and Tuba. I mention the latter two, for they are paired together in the first movement while the rest sustain around them; an oddly effective pairing if I have ever heard one. Of the four trombones, one is a bass trombone, and of the trumpets, one sounds to me like it is a piccolo or E-flat trumpet. The larger sections give the ensemble's core sound some heft and meat, while the small total membership of ten players allows Arnold to use chamber textures when required.

Tight little melodic and rhythmic cells are used memorably by Arnold, wrapped amidst modern dissonance and cinematic playfulness. Of course, the composer relishes having expert brass players at his beck and call, inserting many virtuosic flourishes and textural demands amongst Arnold's own brand of musical fun. What a riot!

Works
Symphony for Brass, op. 123 (20.23)
Symphony 9, op. 128 (27.15)

Performers
Philip Jones Brass Ensemble (op. 123)
Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra
Vernon Handley, conductor

Label: Argo / Conifer
Year: 1979 / 1996; 2006
Total Timing: 71.54

 

 

Find more Arnold recordings HERE!