Arnold Cello Concerto on Naxos

[albion]

An imminent (30th August) release from Naxos will include the world premiere recording of Malcolm Arnold's Cello Concerto, Op.136 -



NAXOS 8572640

- the full programme being:

Cello Concerto, Op. 136 (World Première Recording) - a reworked and revised performing edition of the original 1988 version, edited with the composer's approval by David Ellis

Symphony for Strings, Op.13

Fantasy for Recorder and String Quartet, Op.140 - a reworked and revised performing edition by David Ellis of the composer's 1990 score

Saxophone Concerto (World Première Recording) - an arrangement made by David Ellis at the request of the composer of his Piano Sonata (1942)

Concertino for Flute and Strings, Op.19a (World Première Recording) - an orchestration of the composer's Sonatina, Op.19 (1948)

Some fascinating additions to the Arnold discography!

[TerraEpon]

Saxophone concerto arrangement of a piano sonata? o.O

I do wish Arnold didn't wrote so much for soloist and strings....

[Paul Barasi]

I want mine now. Why do we have to wait until 30 August, what's wrong with these Naxos people?

[TerraEpon]

That's nothing. Sometimes they released something for download and the CD doesn't come out until months later.

[Mark Thomas]

Naxos' policy is to release some recording for digital download well in advance of their physical release. For instance, the first of their series of three CDs of Raff's solo piano music with Tra Nguyen will be released digitally in November this year not be available as a CD until 1 April next next. Hyperion do the same, although the lead time isn't so great.

[Dundonnell]

Just listened twice through to the Arnold Cello Concerto, Op. 136 on the new Naxos disc.

It is not a great cello concerto but it's previous neglect does seem astonishing! The first movement is jolly in the familiar Arnold style but the central Lento has the sad, reflective melancholia which I find so moving in Arnold's music, particularly, for obvious reasons, in his later music. The last movement attempts jollity at times but its lyricism is tinged with sadness and regret in an almost Elgarian sense. The concerto is played with all his usual skill by Raphael Wallfisch.

Two points-as Rob Barnett notes in his Musicweb review, the title "The Shakespearean" has mysteriously disappeared from the work without explanation for either the original title or its removal. The other, which Barnett does not comment on, is that this is a performing edition made in 2000 by David Ellis to a Concerto originally composed in 1988. What changes have made by Ellis? It is important to know this sort of information and the author of the cd booklet notes should tell us.

[albion]

a performing edition made in 2000 by David Ellis to a Concerto originally composed in 1988. What changes have made by Ellis? It is important to know this sort of information and the author of the cd booklet notes should tell us.

Some useful background information from Malcolm Arnold: Rogue Genius (Anthony Meredith and Paul Harris):

Malcolm was to write five works in his first year at Attleborough [1987], including a Recorder Concerto for Michala Petri and a Cello Concerto for Julian Lloyd Webber. The therapeutic value from this was immense, but his impaired capability, which he had somehow miraculously transcended in the Ninth Symphony, led to a lack of invention and substance. The Cello Concerto with its pages of scales and arpeggios was a worry for Julian Lloyd Webber as it was scheduled to be played at the Festival Hall. He eventually decided to go ahead with it, not wanting to upset Malcolm, and was thankful the critics were kind. But it was not an easy occasion ...

It has re-emerged recently, however, in a revised version by David Ellis, commissioned by Anthony [Day, Arnold's full-time carer]. David's comments are instructive:

"As soon as I saw the score I could see the muddle in Malcolm's mind. As in the Fantasy for Recorder and String Quartet, another disaster of this period, he was turning the page before he had finished."

The slow movement, for example, started with a sombre little theme, after which there was a bare section with the cello playing arpeggios.

"They're nice arpeggios, but clearly there should be a tune in the orchestra going on at the same time. Malcolm would have heard it , but forgot to write it down. So I've written one in, springing, as it would have done, from the first subject."

While filling in the empty score David also reduced the orchestra, which helped tone down a number of exaggerations, which David believed were the result of muddled thinking.

"There were also some silly things. A piccolo and two flutes, for example, which were hardly used. The second flute only played one note, the very last of the first movement! That's not the real Malcolm. He would never have done that."

The alterations and additions are not simply Arnold pastiche, David at one stage giving a solo to an instrument Malcolm strongly disliked, the cor anglais, 'simply because it suited the music'. More than just an effective repair job, the Arnold-Ellis Cello Concerto is an attractive work in its own right, but, being something of a hybrid, it has so far struggled to find favour.

In other words, Malcolm Arnold supplied the thematic and structural skeleton and David Ellis fleshed out the bones. Although the work clearly does not stand in the front rank of Arnold's concertos (and there are many that do), I still think that it is nothing short of miraculous that the skeleton was written at all! David Ellis has succeeded in producing a coherent work in the spirit of Malcolm Arnold, and works from Arnold's final period (including the 9th Symphony and the Robert Kett Overture) are worth hearing.

[Mark Thomas]

Fascinating. Thanks, John.

[Dundonnell]

Indeed..thanks very much, John, for the information about the Cello Concerto. That really does fill in the blanks. I wonder why the author of the cd booklet notes makes absolutely no mention of any of this.

I also fully agree about the 9th Symphony. It is an extraordinary work, three movements of apparently casual insouciance followed by the huge Lento finale of heartbreaking intensity.

[edurban]

The genesis of this recording makes me feel queasy.  Surely a piece that that offers such severe evidence of mental decline that someone else has to (re)write parts of it is more a medical document than an artistic one.  A little scary, this.

David

[Mark Thomas]

A fair enough point, but for the same reason I'd feel unhappier listening to it in the state in which it was left by Arnold than I would in hearing a responsibly and sensitively carried out "realisation" which paid tribute to his memory, as Ellis' version appears to be.